BX  9220  .M66  1914 
Moore,  Walter  W.  1857-1926. 
Appreciations  and  historica: 
addresses 


MOSES   DRURY    llOGK. 


JAN  "Q  1915 
A., 


APPRECIATIONS 


AND 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES 


Walter  W.  Mooke,  D.  D.,  LL.  D., 
President  of  Union  Theological  Seminary  in  Virginia, 


TO 

L,  F.  M. 


Contents! 


Page 

Moses  Drury  Hoge 5 

Jacob  Henry  Smith 14 

William  Henry  Green 23 

Cyrus  Hall  McCormtck 31 

WiLLJ/vM  Wallace  Spence 67 

Joseph  Bryan 77 

The  Centennial  Celebration  of  Union  Seminary 81 

The  First  Fifty"  Years  op  Union  Seminary 86 

Beginnings  and  Development  of  the  Presbyterian  Church 

IN  North  Carolina 129 


3fUu2itration£J 


Moses  Drxjry  Hoge Frontispiece. 

Facing  Page 

Jacob  Henry  Smith 14 

William  Henry  Green 23 

Cyrus  Hall  McCormick 31 

William  Wallace  Spence 67 

Joseph  Bryan 77 

John  Holt  Rice 103 

Benjamin  M.  Smith 120 

Robert  L.  Dabney 123 

Thomap  E.  Peck 125 


Jilosiesi  Bturp  ?|oge 

Address  at  the  Memorial  Service  in  the  Second  Presbyterian  Church  of 
Richmond,  February  5,  1899. 

Few  men  in  any  walk  of  life  have  ever  so  deeply 
impressed  an  entire  community  with  the  power 
of  a  noble  personality  as  the  lamented  servant  of 
God  whose  virtues  and  labors  we  commemorate 
to-day.  Certainly  no  minister  of  the  gospel  in 
all  the  history  of  this  ancient  commonwealth  was 
ever  accorded  a  position  so  eminent  by  the  public 
at  large.  This  popular  estimate  was  deliberate 
and  exact.  The  people  knew  him.  For  more  than 
fifty  years,  through  storm  and  sunshine,  in  war 
and  peace,  they  had  studied  his  character  and 
watched  his  work,  and  they  have  rendered  their 
verdict:  that  Moses  D.  Hoge  was  a  man;  a  strong, 
wise,  high-minded,  great-hearted,  heroic  man; 
that  through  all  these  years  of  stress  and  toil 
and  publicity  he  wore  the  white  flower  of  a  blame- 
less life;  and  that  he  preached  the  gospel  of  the 
grace  of  God  with  a  dignity  and  authority  and 
tenderness,  with  a  beauty  and  pathos  and  power 
which  have  rarely,  if  ever,  been  surpassed  in  the 
annals  of  the  American  pulpit. 

Long  before  the  close  of  his  consecrated  career 
he  had  taken  his  place  in  public  interest  even  by 
the  side  of  those  stately  memorials  of  this  historic 
city  which  men  have  come  from  the  ends  of  the 
earth  to  see — the  bronze  and  marble  reminders 
of  the  men  who  have  forever  associated  the  name 
of  Virginia  with  eloquence  and  virtue  and  valor. 


6  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

No  visitor  who  had  come  from  a  distant  State 
or  a  land  beyond  the  seas,  to  look  upon  these 
memorials  of  the  great  Virginians  of  former  days, 
felt  that  his  visit  to  Richmond  was  complete  till 
he  had  seen  and  heard  the  man  who,  though  an 
humble  minister  of  the  Cross,  was  by  common 
consent  the  most  eminent  living  citizen  of  a  com- 
monwealth which  has  always  been  peculiarly  rich 
in  gifted  sons.  It  was  his  privilege  to  preach  to 
a  larger  number  of  the  men  whose  commanding 
influence  in  public  life,  in  the  learned  professions, 
or  in  the  business  world,  had  conferred  prosperity 
and  honor  upon  the  State,  than  any  other  spiritual 
teacher  of  the  time.  He  was  more  frequentl^^ 
the  spokesman  of  the  people  on  great  public  oc- 
casions than  any  other  man  whom  Richmond  has 
delighted  to  honor.  He  was  more  frequently  the 
subject  of  conversation  in  the  social  circle  than 
any  other  member  of  this  cosmopolitan  com- 
munity. In  every  community  where  he  once 
appeared  his  name  was  thenceforth  a  household 
word.  It  is  not  my  province  at  present  to  speak 
of  these  things.  I  allude  to  them  only  in  order  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  the  explanation  of  this 
preeminence  in  public  esteem  lay  largely  in  the 
character  of  his  work  in  the  pulpit.  That  was  his 
throne.     There  he  was  king. 

In  attempting  to  comply  with  the  request  of 
the  session  of  his  church  to  say  something  to-day 
in  regard  to  this  outstanding  feature  of  Dr.  Hoge's 
work,  a  feeling  of  peculiar  sadness  comes  over  my 
heart.  It  will  be  many  a  long  day  before  any  man 
who  knew  him  can  stand  in  this  pulpit  without 
a  sense  of  wistful  loneliness  at  the  thought  of  that 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  7 

venerated  figure,  with  its  resolute  attitudes  and 
ringing  tones,  which  for  fifty-four  fruitful  years 
stood  in  this  place  as  God's  ambassador,  laying 
the  multitude  under  the  enchantment  of  his 
eloquence,  diffusing  through  this  sanctuary  the 
aroma  of  his  piety,  and  lifting  sad  and  weary 
hearts  to  heaven  on  the  wings  of  his  wonderful 
prayers.  As  some  one  has  said  of  the  death  of 
another  illustrious  preacher,  we  feel  like  children 
who  had  long  sheltered  under  a  mighty  oak;  and 
now  the  old  oak  has  gone  down  and  we  are  out 
in  the  open  sun.  We  hardly  knew,  till  he  fell, 
how  much  we  had  sheltered  under  him.  His 
presence  was  a  protection.  His  voice  was  a  power. 
His  long-established  leadership  was  a  rallying 
centre  for  the  disheartened  soldiers  of  the  cross.. 

We  do  not  murmur  at  the  dispensation  which 
has  taken  him  from  us — 

"But  oh  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand 
And  tlie  soinid  of  a  voice  that  is  still!" 

There  were  certain  physical  features  of  his 
preaching  which  are  perfectly  familiar  to  all  who 
have  heard  him  even  once,  and  which  will  be 
remembered  by  them  forever,  but  which  cannot 
be  known  by  description  to  those  who  have  not. 
When  he  rose  in  the  pulpit,  tall,  straight,  slender, 
sinewy,  commanding,  with  something  vital  and 
electric  in  his  very  movements,  yet  singularly  de- 
liberate, and,  lifting  his  chin  from  his  collar  with 
a  peculiar  movement,  surveyed  the  people  before 
him  and  on  either  side,  with  his  grave,  intellectual 
face  and  almost  melancholy  eyes,  no  one  needed 
to  be  told  that  there  stood  a  master  of  assemblies. 


8  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

The  attention  was  riveted  by  his  appearance  and 
manner  before  he  had  uttered  a  word. 

As  soon  as  he  began  to  speak,  the  clear,  rich 
and  resonant  tones,  reaching  without  effort  to  the 
limits  of  the  largest  assembly,  revealed  to  every 
hearer  another  element  of  his  power  to  move  and 
mould  the  hearts  of  men.  To  few  of  the  world's 
masters  of  discourse  has  it  been  given  to  dem- 
onstrate as  he  did  the  music  and  spell  of  the  human 
voice.  It  was  a  voice  in  a  million — flexible, 
magnetic,  thrilling,  clear  as  a  clarion,  by  turns 
tranquil  and  soothing,  strenuous  and  stirring,  as 
the  speaker  willed,  now  mellow  as  a  cathedral  bell 
heard  in  the  twilight,  now  ringing  like  a  trumpet 
or  rolling  through  the  building  like  melodious 
thunder,  with  an  occasional  impassioned  crash 
like  artillery,  accompanied  by  a  resounding  stamp 
of  his  foot  on  the  floor;  but  never  unpleasant  or 
uncontrolled  or  overstrained;  no  one  ever  heard 
him  scream  or  tear  his  throat.  Some  of  his 
cadences  in  the  utterance  of  particular  words  or 
sentiments  lingered  on  the  ear  and  haunted  the 
memory  for  years  like  a  strain  of  exquisite  music. 
As  you  listened  to  his  voice  in  prayer,  "there  ran 
through  its  pathetic  fall  a  vibration  as  though  the 
minister's  heart  was  singing  like  an  Aeolian  harp 
as  the  breath  of  the  Spirit  of  God  blew  through  its 
strings."  It  was  a  voice  that  adapted  itself  with 
equal  facility  to  all  occasions.  When  he  preached 
to  the  whole  of  General  D.  H.  Hill's  division  in  the 
open  air,  it  rang  like  a  bugle  to  the  outermost 
verge  of  his  vast  congregation.  When  he  stood  on 
the  slope  of  Mount  Ebal  in  Palestine  and  recited 
the  twenty-third   Psalm,   it  was  heard  distinctly 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  9 

by  the  English  clergyman  on  the  other  side  of  the 
valley,  three-quarters  of  a  mile  away.  When  the 
body  of  an  eminent  statesman  and  ruling  elder 
in  his  church  was  borne  into  this  building  and  laid 
before  the  pulpit,  and  the  preacher  rose  and  said, 
"Mark  the  perfect  man  and  behold  the  upright, 
for  the  end  of  that  man  is  peace,"  the  sympa- 
thetic intonations  fell  like  healing  balm  on 
wounded  hearts.  When  he  stood  in  the  Senate 
Chamber  at  Washington  beside  the  mortal  remains 
of  the  great  Carolinian,  and  said  to  the  assembled 
representatives  of  the  greatness  of  this,  nation  and 
of  the  w^orld,  "There  is  nothing  great  but  God;" 
the  voice  and  the  words  alike  impressed  the 
insignificance  of  all  human  concerns  as  compared 
w^ith  religion.  When  he  stood  in  the  chancel  of 
St.  Paul's  and  stretched  his  hand  over  the  casket 
containing  the  pallid  form  of  "the  daughter  of  the 
Confederacy,"  and  said,  "Blessed  are  the  pure 
in  heart  for  they  shall  see  God,"  it  had  the  au- 
thority and  tenderness  of  a  prophet's  benediction. 
Of  the  intellectual  qualities  of  his  preaching,  the 
first  that  impressed  the  hearer  was  the  exquisite 
phrasing.  He  was  a  marvelous  magician  with 
words.  He  w^as  the  prince  of  pulpit  rhetoricians. 
He  had  made  himself  a  master  of  the  art  of  verbal 
expression,  because,  to  use  his  own  words,  he  knew 
that  "style  was  the  crystallization  of  thought," 
and  he  believed  that  "royal  thoughts  ought  to 
wear  royal  robes."  The  splendid  powers  with 
which  he  was  endowed  by  nature  had  been  at  once 
enriched  and  chastened  by  the  strenuous  study 
of  the  world's  best  books.  Every  cultivated 
person   recognized   the  flavor  of  ripe  scholarship 


10  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

in  his  diction  and  even  those  devoid  of  culture  felt 
its  charm  without  being  able  to  define  it.  The 
mellow  splendor  of  his  rhetoric  captivated  all 
classes  of  hearers.  This  rare  beauty  of  his 
language,  this  exquisite  drapery  of  his  thoughts, 
sometimes  tempted  superficial  hearers  to  regard 
him  as  merely  a  skillful  phrase-maker.  Nothing 
could  be  farther  from  the  truth.  He  was  a  superb 
rhetorician  because  he  was  a  true  scholar  and 
a  profound  theologian.  His  rhetoric  drev/  deep. 
The  ocean  greyhound,  which  seems  to  skim  the 
billows,  does  in  fact  plow  deep  beneath  their 
surface,  and  hence  the  safety  of  her  cargo  of  human 
lives  and  precious  wares.  This  masterful  preacher 
was  easy  and  swift — he  distanced  all  his  brethren — 
but  he  was  always  safe,  and  his  ministry  had  the 
momentum  which  only  iveight  can  give.  All  his 
life  long  he  was  a  student — a  student  of  books,  a 
student  of  men,  a  student  of  the  deep  things  of 
God.  When  men  beheld  the  external  splendor 
of  the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  with  its  walls  and 
roofs  of  white  marble,  surmounted  with  plates 
and  spikes  of  glittering  gold,  they  somxCtimes 
forgot  the  immense  substructions  built  deep  into 
the  ground  and  resting  upon  the  everlasting  rock; 
but  without  that  cyclopean  masonry  hidden  from 
view,  those  snowy  walls  of  marble  and  those  sky- 
piercing  pinnacles  of  gold  could  not  have  been. 
Dr.  Hoge's  surpassing  beauty  of  statement  was 
bottomed  on  eternal  truth. 

He  was,  therefore,  not  only  an  orator,  but  a 
teacher.  His  sermons  were  not  only  brilliant 
in  form,  but  rich  in  truth.  So  that  not  only  in 
point  of  finish,  but  also  in  point  of  force  he  ranks 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  11 

with  the  masters  of  the  contemporary  pulpit. 
It  is  true  that  many  of  his  later  discourses  were 
somewhat  discursive  in  treatment,  necessarily  so 
because  of  the  innumerable  demands  upon  his 
time,  but  he  never  failed  to  bring  beaten  oil  to 
the  sanctuary  when  it  was  possible,  and  he  never 
for  a  moment  relinquished  or  lowered  his  concep- 
tion of  the  teaching  function  of  the  ministry. 
His  people  were  not  only  interested  and  enter- 
tained, but  they  were  fed  and  nourished  with  truth. 
The  lecture  which  he  delivered  at  the  University 
of  V^irginia  forty-nine  years  ago  on  "The  Success 
of  Christianity,  an  Evidence  of  its  Divine  Origin," 
and  known  to  some  of  you  from  its  publication 
in  the  portly  volume  entitled  "Evidences  of 
Christianity,"  is  a  noble  specimen  of  the  kind  of 
work  he  was  capable  of  when  he  was  at  his  best. 
His  substantial  attainments,  then,  were  no  less 
remarkable  than  his  graces  of  speech ;  but  here  we 
have  sighted  a  subject  too  large  for  the  limits  of 
this  address.  To  use  Dr.  Breed's  figure,  a  small 
island  can  be  explored  in  a  few  hours,  but  not  a 
wide  continent.  The  one  may  be  characterized 
in  a  word,  but  not  the  other.  This  island  is  a 
bank  of  sand,  that  one  a  smiling  pasture,  a  third 
a  mass  of  cliffs,  a  fourth  a  mountain  peak;  but  the 
continent  is  a  vast  combination  of  all  these 
features,  indefinitely  multiplied.  So  the  gifts  of 
some  men  are  insular  and  may  be  summed  up  in 
a  few  words,  but  the  gifts  of  the  man  in  whose 
memory  we  are  assembled  to-day  were  continental. 
Every  one  that  had  heard  him  even  once  saw  that 
there  were  here  peaceful  valleys  where  the  grass 
grew  green,  and  the  sweet  flowers  bloomed,  and 


12  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

streams  ran  rippling;  but  those  who  sailed  farther 
along  shore  found  that  there  were  also  mighty 
cliffs  where  his  convictions  defied  the  waves  of 
passing  opinion;  and  when  they  pushed  their 
exploration  into  the  interior,  they  came  upon  great 
uplands  of  philosophy,  where  the  granite  of  a 
strong  theology  protruded,  and  where  the  snows 
of  doctrine  lay  deep;  but  the  thoughtful  explorer 
knew  well  that  the  granite  was  essential  to  the 
solidity  of  those  towering  heights  and  that  with- 
out those  snows  upon  the  peaks  there  w^ould  have 
been  no  streams  in  the  valleys,  no  broad  reaches  of 
meadow,  no  blooming  flowers.  He  was  indeed 
a  superb  rhetorician,  with  a  marvelous  w^ealth  of 
diction,  a  phenomenal  power  of  description,  and 
a  rare  felicity  of  illustration;  but  rhetoric  in  the 
pulpit  has  no  abiding  charm  apart  from  truth. 
Strong  men  and  thoughtful  women  do  not  sit 
for  fifty-four  years  in  ever-increasing  numbers 
under  a  ministry  which  has  not  in  it  the  strength 
of  Divine  truth,  deeply  studied,  sincerely  be- 
lieved, and  earnestly  proclaimed. 

We  have  now  seen  something  of  what  he  was  in 
his  preaching  as  a  man,  and  something  of  what 
he  was  as  a  scholar,  but,  after  all,  the  hiding  of  his 
power  lay  in  what  he  was  as  a  saint.  Nature  had 
done  much  for  him.  Cultivation  had  done  much. 
But  grace  had  done  most  of  all.  He  preached 
from  a  true  and  profound  experience  of  the  mercy 
and  power  of  God.  He  knew  the  deadly  evil  of 
sin.  He  knew  the  saving  grace  of  Christ.  He 
knew  the  brooding  sorrows  of  the  human  heart. 
He  knew  the  comfort  of  communion  with  God. 
He    knew    that    the    gospel    was    God's   supreme 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  13 

answer  to  man's  supreme  need;  and  the  crowning 
glory  of  this  pulpit  is  that,  from  the  first  day  of 
its  occupancy  to  the  last,  it  rang  true  to  the 
evangel:  "Behold  the  lamb  of  God  that  taketh 
away  the  sin  of  the  world."  There  was  never  a 
day  in  all  these  fifty-four  years  when  men  could 
not  have  pointed  to  him  as  to  the  original  of 
Cowper's  immortal  portrait — 

"There  stands  the  messenger  of  truth:  there  stands 
The  legate  of  the  skies! — his  theme  divine, 
His  office  sacred,  his  credentials  clear. 
By  him  the  violated  law  speaks  out 
Its  thunders;  and  by  him,  in  strains  as  sweet 
As  angels  use,  the  gospel  whispers  peace. 
He  stabhshes  the  strong,  restores  the  weak, 
Reclaims  the  wanderer,  binds  the  broken  heart. 
And,   arm'd  himself  in  panoply  complete 
Of  heavenly  temper,  furnishes  with  arms 
Bright  as  his  own,  and  trains,  by  every  rule 
Of  holy  discipline,  to  glorious  war 
The  sacramental  host  of  God's  elect!" 


14  APPRECIATIONS  AND 


3^eb.  Jacob  ?|enrj>  ^mitJ),  M.  JB. 

From,  the  Central  Presbyterian,  February  9,  1898. 

The  first  time  I  ever  saw  Dr.  Smith  was  in  a 
large  book-store  in  Charlotte,  N.  C.  If  I  had 
never  seen  him  again  I  should  have  carried  with 
me  through  life  the  memory  of  that  compact 
frame  with  its  decided  and  vigorous  movements, 
the  deep  rich  tones  of  his  voice,  his  genial  and 
hearty  greeting  of  the  proprietor  as  he  asked  where 
the  latest  books  were  kept,  and  the  intelligent 
sureness  and  authority  of  his  manner,  as  with  shrewd 
and  racy  comments  he  took  down  and  ran  through 
with  his  eye  one  volume  after  another  of  history, 
philosophy  and  works  on  general  literature.  Hav- 
ing some  taste  for  reading  myself,  though  then 
quite  ignorant  of  the  particular  books  he  was 
handling,  I  felt  drawn  to  a  man  who  was  evidently 
so  much  at  home  among  books,  and  lingered  near 
him  to  hear  his  remarks,  though  I  did  not  venture 
to  speak  to  him,  being  only  a  lad  of  some  thirteen 
years  and  very  shy.  He  remained  only  a  few 
minutes,  but  quite  long  enough  to  impress  me 
with  the  fact  that  this  was  no  ordinary  man.  I 
wished  he  had  stayed  longer. 

It  was  therefore  with  uncommon  pleasure  that, 
a  few  years  later  when  I  was  a  student  at  Davidson 
College,  I  saw  this  same  man  walk  up  the  aisle 
of  the  old  chapel  one  Sunday  with  his  neat  black 
sermon  case  under  his  arm  and  take  his  place 
reverently  in  thic  pulpit.     I  settled  myself  as  com- 


0H^^ 

iSite.'/ 

^^JwSk^^    ^tf*^^ 

I' 

^ 

tZ^nH^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 

^ 

JACOB   HKNRY  SMITH. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  15 

fortably  as  the  uncompromising  pews  of  the  old 
building  which  we  then  used  as  a  church  would 
allow,  confident  that  we  were  going  to  hear  some- 
thing  good,    but   thinking   more,    I    fear,    of   the 
pleasure  it  would  give  me  to  listen  to  the  play  of 
that  strong  and   flexible  voice,   and  of  the  vigor 
of   thought   and    the   literary   finish   which    must 
characterize  the  sermons  of  such  a  man  as  I  had 
heard  talking  in  that  book  store,  th^n  of  the  truth 
itself  which   he  was  commissioned   to  deliver  to 
us  as   an   ambassador  of   Christ.     That  did   not 
last   long,    however,    after   he   began.     The   voice 
did  indeed  roll  in  rich  volume  through  the  house, 
crashing    almost    like    artillery    in    impassioned 
passages  and  seeming  to  shake  the  building;  and 
the  style  had  indeed  that  unmistakable  flavor  of 
good   reading  which   results   only   from   years  of 
familiarity   with   the   master   minds  of  the   race. 
But  attention  to  these  things  soon  gave  place  to 
absorbed  interest  in  the  subject  itself,  "Turning 
points  in  life,"  Luke  xix,  41-42:  "And  when  he  was 
come  near,  he  beheld  the  city  and  wept  over  it, 
saying.  If  thou  hadst  known,  even  thou,  at  least 
in   this   thy  day,    the   things  which   belong  unto 
thy  peace!  but  now  they  are  hid  from  thine  eyes." 
I  can  still  see  his  hand  follow  with  thumb  and 
forefinger  the  edge  of  the  pulpit  in  a  straight  line 
till  it  reached  the  corner  and  then  turn  sharply 
at  right  angles  to  its  former  course.     I  can  still 
hear  the  earnest  tones  making  the  application  to 
turning  points  in  life.     Hundreds  of  sermons  have 
faded   from   my  memory.     That  one  stands  out 
like  a  great  promontory  on  a  flat  and  sandy  shore. 
That  afternoon  I  was  introduced  to  him  at  the 


16  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

house  of  one  of  the  professors  and  got  a  view  of 
another  side  of  his  character,  as  his  conversation 
flowed  hke  a  sparkHng  stream,  with  innocent 
humor  breaking  over  it  ever  and  anon  hke  gleams 
of  sunlight.  I  remember  especially  his  pleasant 
badinage  with  the  student  who  acted  as  precentor 
in  the  choir,  his  compliments  on  the  character  of 
the  music,  and  his  playful  criticism  of  the  too  full 
exhibition  of  the  "machinery"  or  "works,"  re- 
ferring to  the  conspicuous  manner  of  beating  the 
time.  So  here  was  a  man  of  range.  One  whose 
religion  did  not  gloom  the  brightness  of  life. 
No  hesitation  in  speaking  of  religion  at  an}^  time, 
but  no  cant.  No  hesitation  about  enjoying  the 
innocent  pleasures  of  life,  but  no  unseemly  levity. 

Students  of  all  kinds  were  impressed  with  his 
preaching  whenever  he  visited  a  college  town. 
By  the  way,  when  he  was  pastor  of  the  church  at 
Charlottesville,  among  other  students  of  the 
University  of  Virginia  who  attended  his  ministry 
and  were  converted  under  his  preaching  was  a 
youth  from  New  York  by  the  name  of  Charles 
A.  Briggs,  a  boy  who  was  destined  to  achieve 
enviable  renown  as  a  great  biblical  scholar  and 
equally  unenviable  notoriety  as  a  great  troubler 
of  Israel.  By  an  inquiry  and  statement  which  the 
erratic  professor  himself  made  a  few  years  ago  to 
Dr.  Rawlings  in  regard  to  the  gentleman  who 
had  preached  at  Charlottesville  just  before  the 
war,  the  fact  was  brought  to  Dr.  Smith's  attention 
that  he  was  Mr.  Briggs's  spiritual  father. 

When  I  became  a  student  in  the  Seminary  of 
which  he  had  been  one  of  the  most  valued  directors 
for  many  years  before  and  continued   to  be  for 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  17 

many  years  after,  I  saw  him  every  spring  and  from 
time  to  time  heard  him  preach  or  make  addresses, 
being  always  struck  with  the  thoroughness  of  his 
preparation,  the  richness  of  his  matter,  and  his 
soulful  manner  of  speaking.  It  gave  one  a  rare 
sense  of  satisfaction  to  see  him  preside  over  public 
exercises  as  President  of  the  Board;  everything 
was  done  with  so  m.uch  strength  and  fitness. 
None  of  the  young  men  who  received  from  his  hand 
their  diplomas  can  ever  forget  the  earnest  and 
tender  words  with  which  he  sent  them  forth  to 
preach  the  everlasting  gospel. 

Whenever  he  was  on  the  examining  committee, 
the  classes  knew  that  after  the  professor  had 
apparently  covered  the  ground  with  them,  there 
would  be  a  few  pointed  questions  from  that 
watchful  gentleman  who  never  held  a  Hebrew 
Bible  upside  down  and  never  nodded  during 
these  weary  exercises,  questions  which  somehow 
seemed  to  put  their  real  knowledge  of  the  subject 
to  the  proof  more  effectually  than  even  those 
of  the  professor  himself. 

Nobody  who  had  once  traveled  with  him  from 
Hampden-Sidney  to  Keysville,  the  route  he  gen- 
erally took  to  and  from  the  Seminary,  was  ever 
quite  willing  thereafter  to  miake  the  trip  in  any 
other  hack  than  the  one  Dr.  Smith  was  in.  Those 
eighteen  miles  seemed  short,  even  when  the  rain 
poured  steadily  from  beginning  to  end  and  the 
wheels  toiled  dismally  through  the  mud  and  the 
passengers  were  slammed  this  way  and  that,  as 
successive  mud  holes  were  encountered.  Nothing 
could  dash  the  spirits  of  a  crowd  listening  to  those 
irresistible  stories,  told  as  nobody  else  could  tell 


18  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

them — of  the  man  who  pronounced  "patriarchs" 
partridges  and  who,  the  narrator  said,  was  making 
game  of  hol}^  things;  of  the  ignorant  preacher  who 
in  reading  the  description  of  the  coverings  of  the 
Mosaic  tabernacle  read  "badgers'  skins,"  ''beggars' 
skins,''  and  commented  on  the  severity  of  the  old 
dispensation  as  compared  with  the  new,  saying 
that  when  a  poor  man  died  now  he  was  given  a 
decent  Christian  burial,  but  then  whenever  a 
beggar  died,  "they  clapped  his  skin  on  the  taber- 
nacle;" of  the  darkey  arraigned  for  stealing  chick- 
ens, whom  the  judge  asked  if  he  didn't  know  that 
was  a  "reprehensible  offence,"  and  who  replied 
he  "thought  it  wuz  a  plank  fence,  sah,  but  he 
found  it  was  a  bobwire,  sah ;"  of  the  colored  woman 
whose  infant  he  baptized  and  who,  when  asked 
what  name  he  was  to  give  the  child,  almost 
paralyzed  him  with  the  grave  answer — "General 
Beauregard!";  of  the  ludicrous  accidents  which 
befell  him  and  Dr.  Pharr,  or  Mr.  Doll,  when  they 
were  preaching  together,  such  as  his  attempt  to 
raise  the  tune  of  "Blow  ye  the  trumpet,  blow," 
when,  just  as  he  uttered  the  first  word  "Blow," 
he  inadvertently  stepped  off  the  high  platform  and 
found  himself  pitching  forward  with  long  strides 
down  the  aisle  towards  the  door  to  keep  from 
falling;  of  the  Scotchman  who  wished  to  be  an 
elder  and  when  asked  about  his  qualifications 
said:  "No,  he  could  not  pray  in  public,  nor  make 
pastoral  visits  to  the  afflicted,"  and  so  on,  and 
when  pressed  to  name  his  special  qualification  said 
he  could  "raise  an  objection."  The  woods  rang 
with  unrestrained  laughter,  trustees,  students, 
drivers  all   alike   under   the   spell   of   his   humor. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  19 

Then,  it  might  be,  in  a  few  moments,  all  would  be 
moved  well-nigh  to  tears  as  he  related  the  story 
of  the  Scotch  girl  who  applied  for  admission  into 
the  church,  and,  awed  by  the  presence  of  the 
session,  could  give  no  clear  answers  to  their  ques- 
tions, and  who,  as  she  withdrew  disappointed, 
found  her  voice  at  the  door  and  said  "I  canna  talk 
for  Jesus,  but  I  cou'd  die  for  him,"  and  was  im- 
mediately recalled  and  received  .into  the  com- 
munion of  the  church. 

After  I  became  a  professor  in  the  Seminary  I 
had  the  good  fortune  to  see  Dr.  Smith  still  more 
frequently,  especially  after  my  marriage  to  a 
lady  whom  he  had  known  well  from  her  childhood, 
and  whom  he  always  continued  to  call  by  her  given 
name  in  a  fatherly  and  affectionate  way.  Our 
house  became  his  customary  home  when  the 
Board  of  Trustees  was  in  session.  He  would 
often  come  early,  before  the  Board  met,  and  stay 
with  us  for  several  days,  to  the  unqualified  delight 
of  the  whole  family.  It  was  on  these  occasions 
that  we  saw  most  deeply  into  his  heart.  His 
prayers  in  the  family  circle,  his  conversation  at 
the  table,  his  long  talks  in  my  study,  chiefly  of 
the  joys  and  sorrows  of  a  pastor's  life — all  revealed 
to  us  the  strong  and  tender  man  more  clearly 
than  we  had  ever  seen  him  before.  Few  people 
outside  of  his  own  charge  knew  the  wealth  of 
affection  in  his  nature.  He  especially  loved  chil- 
dren and  they  loved  him.  I  recall  the  deep  satis- 
faction with  which  he  related  the  incident  of  his 
little  grandson  whose  mother  was  trying  to  give 
him  some  idea  of  the  blessedness  of  heaven,  and 
the  little  fellow  asked,  "Is  it  as  nice  as  Dan'pa's?" 


20  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

And,  truly,  there  were  few  placjes  this  side  of  heaven 
that  were  "as  nice  as  Dan'pa's."  All  his  brethren 
know  how  signally  Dr.  Smith  was  blessed  in  his 
home  life:  a  gentle,  wise  and  godly  wife,  fully 
identified  with  him  in  all  his  work,  and  a  troop  of 
exceptionally  active  and  gifted  boys  and  girls, 
each  of  whom  became  early  in  life,  under  the 
influence  of  that  home  and  pulpit,  an  intelligent, 
earnest  and  faithfu'l  Christian — in  nothing  was 
God's  goodness  to  him  more  manifest  than  in  his 
family  relations.  He  told  me  once  that  when 
one  of  his  sons  was  about  grown  he  heard  him 
one  afternoon  through  the  open  window  of  his 
study,  as  the  youth  passed  through  the  yard 
towards  the  house,  decline  a  companion's  invita- 
tion to  meet  him  up  town  that  night,  adding  that 
"he  did  not  know  how  the  streets  of  Greensboro 
looked  by  lamp  light  till  he  was  eighteen  years 
old."  "Yes,"  said  the  listening  and  pleased 
father  to  himself,  "and  that's  the  reason  you  are 
what  you  are  to-day."  If  I  may  speak  of  it 
without  indelicacy,  I  would  like  to  say  to  parents 
in  general  that  one  secret  of  Dr.  Smith's  phenome- 
nal success  in  bringing  up  that  remarkable  family 
of  sons  and  daughters  was  that  he  and  Mrs. 
Smith  made  their  own  home  the  most  attractive 
place  to  them  in  all  the  world.  There  was  no 
temptation  to  go  elsewhere.  It  was  not  harsh 
restraint.  Those  boys  enjoyed  all  boyish  things. 
They  excelled  in  all  games,  they  skated  and  hunted 
and  fished.  Dr.  Smith  often  going  with  them  in 
their  tramps  through  the  woods. 

One  night  at  commencement  a  distinguished  and 
beloved  member  of  the  Board,  who  had  seen  much 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  21 

sorrow  and  had  grieved  over  wayward  sons, 
sitting  next  to  me  in  the  Seminary  chapel  before 
the  excersises  began,  called  my  attention  to 
Dr.  Smith's  beaming  face  as  he  sat  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  room,  commented  upon  his  age  and  his 
remarkable  vigor  and  elasticity,  said  he  had  had  a 
busy,  fruitful,  and  happy  life,  and  spoke  especially 
of  the  happiness  he  had  had  in  his  children,  adding 
with  a  half  sigh  that  he  supposed  no  one  of  them 
had  ever  given  his  father  a  moment's  uneasiness. 

I  have  often  heard  another  thoughtful  minister 
of  our  Church  say  that  he  would  rather  have  Dr. 
Smith's  life  work  behind  him  than  that  of  any 
man  he  had  ever  known.  And  where  indeed 
could  our  young  ministers  find  a  man  more  worthy 
of  their  imitation?  His  diligence  as  a  student 
kept  his  preaching  fresh  and  rich  to  the  very  end — 
and,  by  the  way,  he  preached  to  a  larger  number  of 
thoughtful  and  eminent  public  men  than  any  other 
pastor  that  has  ever  lived  in  North  Carolina,  his 
church  being  for  years  the  State's  chief  nursery 
of  pure  and  learned  lawyers,  judges  and  governors. 
His  warm  and  tender  sympathy  with  suffering 
made  him  an  angel  of  God  to  the  afflicted,  his 
own  deep  experience  of  divine  grace — his  own 
deep  knowledge  of  the  preciousness  of  Christ — 
teaching  him  what  to  say  for  their  comfort  and 
making  him  a  veritable  Barnabas  to  the  bereaved, 
the  sick  and  the  dying;  his  firm  grasp  of  the  great 
doctrines  of  our  Church;  his  intelligent  conception 
of  her  mission  to  the  world ;  his  own  experience  as 
teacher,  pastor,  and  evangelist,  all  combined  to 


22  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

make  him  an  invaluable  presbyter  and  an  invalu- 
able counsellor  on  the  boards  of  our  great  institu- 
tions. Yes,  it  is  certain  that  he  has  a  great  work 
behind  him.  It  is  not  less  certain  that  he  has  a 
still  greater  work  before  him. 


WILLIAM    HENRY    GREEN, 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  23 


OTilliam  ?|enrp  #reen 

Presbyterian  Quarterly,  April,  1900. 

Born  at  Groveville,  near  Princeton,  January 
27th,  1825,  matriculated  at  Lafayette  College  at 
twelve,  graduated  with  honors  before  he  was  six- 
teen two  years  tutor  there,  graduated  at  Prince- 
ton Seminary  in  1846,  appointed  instructor  in 
Hebrew  the  same  year,  and  remaining  in  the  same 
department  and  the  same  institution  for  fifty-four 
years  (except  the  years  1849-1851,  when  he  was 
pastor  of  the  Central  Presbyterian  Church,  Phila- 
delphia)—such  are  the  external  facts  in  the  life 
of  the  great  biblical  scholar  who  has  so  recently 
gone  to  his  reward  at  the  ripe  age  of  seventy-five. 

Two  or  three  of  the  facts  above  stated  might 
make  the  impression  that  he  was  a  precocious  and 
brilliant  man,  to  whom  hard  tasks  were  easy. 
This  was  not  the  case.  Dr.  Green's  career  is  one 
of  the  best  contemporary  illustrations  of  the  im- 
mense results  that  can  be  accomplished  by  definite- 
ness  of  aim,  steadfastness  of  purpose,  and  hard 
work.  He  had  a  clear,  strong,  well-balanced 
mind,  but  he  was  not  a  genius,  in  the  usual  ac- 
ceptation of  that  term.  He  became  the  greatest 
biblical  scholar  in  America,  not  by  natural  superi- 
ority of  intellectual  endowments,  but  by  devout 
and  strenuous  study.  When  preparing  for  college 
he  insistently  and  earnestly  begged  to  be  excused 
from  the  study  of  the  languages  on  the  ground 


24  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

that  he  had  no  aptitude  whatever  for  them.  This 
incident  in  the  Hfe  of  a  man  who  became  a  world- 
renowned  hnguist  is  commended  to  the  attention 
of  those  who  are  pushing  the  fixed  curriculum  to 
one  side  to  make  place  for  optional  or  elective 
courses  on  the  supposition  that  boys  at  college 
best  know  what  their  own  aptitudes  are. 

The  real  secret  of  young  Green's  perfect  recita- 
tions in  the  class  room,  and  of  his  leisure  for  chess 
playing  and  the  reading  of  Tasso  in  French,  lay 
in  his  fidelity  and  his  systematic  habits.  He  was 
not  only  prompt  at  every  recitation,  but  he  never 
missed  the  college  prayers  in  the  chapel  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  summer  and  winter.  He 
made  conscience  of  work.  He  was  a  servant  of 
God  in  study.  He  early  perceived  the  spiritual 
value  of  earnest  intellectual  toil  and  the  truth 
of  the  exhortation  which  one  of  the  early  instruc- 
tors in  Princeton  College  used  to  address  to  his 
pupils:  "Gentlemen,  you  will  find  the  best  prepa- 
ration for  death  to  be  a  really  thorough  knowledge 
of  Greek  grammar." 

When  he  became  a  teacher,  the  same  high  and 
serious  temper  made  him  intolerant  of  indolence 
and  lack  of  conscientiousness  on  the  part  of  a 
professed  servant  of  God,  and  gave  him  the  respect 
of  all  his  students.  The  permanent  regard  of 
students  is  not  to  be  won  by  indulgent  and  easy- 
going methods,  by  expecting  little  of  them,  but 
by  inciting  them  to  tasks  that  will  develop  their 
powers  and  by  setting  them  the  example  of  con- 
scientious application.  Dr.  Green  was  not  un- 
just, but  he  was  exacting,  and,  though  teaching 
the  least  attractive  and  most  difficult  part  of  the 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  25 

seminary  course,  the  part  that  sometimes  develops 
those  mysterious  diseases  of  the  eyes  which  about 
the  third  or  fourth  week  of  the  Junior  year  sud- 
denly convince  the  candidate  that  he  will  never 
be  able  to  see  well  enough  to  master  Hebrew,  he 
succeeded  in  making  most  of  his  men  work  harder 
for  him  than  for  any  other  professor,  not  by 
objurgation  or  passionate  denunciation  of  idleness 
or  stupidity,  but  by  "the  simple  weight  and  in- 
sistence of  his  personality" — a  modest,  earnest, 
firm,  hard-working,  scholarly  Christian  man.  One 
of  his  former  pupils  says:  "There  was  often  a 
prevailing  sense  of  short-coming.  In  many  points — 
we  offend  all."  But  they  kept  at  it.  The  man 
in  the  chair  was  a  splendid  example  of  what  could 
be  done  by  keeping  everlastingly  at  it.  And  they 
knew  that,  great  as  were  his  own  attainments  and 
uncompromising  as  were  his  demands  upon  them, 
he  was  not  a  mere  scholar  and  they  were  not  mere 
students  of  a  language.  He  never  forgot  and 
never  allowed  them  to  forget  that  they  were  pre- 
paring to  preach  the  Gospel,  and  that  the  measure 
of  their  faithfulness  in  the  seminary  would  be  the 
measure  of  their  fruitfulness  in  the  ministry. 

Moses  Stuart,  Addison  Alexander,  William 
Henry  Green — these  three.  But  the  greatest  of 
these  is  Green.  Because  talent  is  better  than 
genius  in  the  class-room.  Alexander's  brilliant 
mind  acquired  knowledge  with  an  ease  and  swift- 
ness as  of  intuition,  and  hence,  as  has  been  said,  he 
appeared  to  have  no  consciousness  of  a  process  in 
his  appropriation  of  a  language  or  its  literature. 
The  result  was  that  it  was  not  easy  for  him  to  set 
forth  a  methodical  process  of  acquisition  for  the 


26  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

average  man.  Only  the  choice  few  could  keep  up 
with  him.  As  the  French  officer  said  of  the  charge 
of  the  Light  Brigade,  "It  was  magnificent,  but  it 
was  not  war."  Addison  Alexander  was  un- 
doubtedly the  brightest  star  that  ever  shone  in  the 
Princeton  constellation,  but  he  was  not  the 
greatest  teacher.  It  was  Green  who  introduced 
method  and  system  there  in  the  study  of  Hebrew, 
and  showed  his  students  how  any  man  of  intelli- 
gence and  industry  could  get  a  secure  working 
knowledge  of  the  language  and  become  an  ex- 
pounder of  God's  Word  at  first  hand. 

"The  great  thing  about  William  Henry  Green," 
says  Dr.  Cuyler,  "is  the  beautiful  combination 
of  docility  and  courage  that  has  distinguished 
all  his  career."  His  modesty  impressed  every- 
body. I  shall  never  forget  the  flutter  into  which 
I  was  thrown  one  day  while  teaching  a  class  of 
ministers  in  a  Summer  School  of  Hebrew  at  the 
Episcopal  Divinity  School  in  Philadelphia,  when 
the  door  opened  and  the  greatest  biblical  scholar 
in  America  walked  quietly  in  and  sat  down — 
William  Henry  Green!  I  suppose  I  gasped.  I 
know  I  felt  as  Dr.  Peck  said  he  did  when  Edwards 
A.  Park  entered  his  church  in  Baltimore  and  seated 
himself  to  hear  him  preach.  I  felt  as  a  young 
lieutenant  would  have  felt  who,  when  descanting 
to  his  comrades  on  the  art  of  war,  had  seen  Na- 
poleon Bonaparte  join  his  little  circle  of  auditors. 
I  knew  him  slightly  and  he  had  always  treated 
me  in  the  kindest  and  most  cordial  manner, 
but  I  was  abashed,  dismayed,  scared.  With  an 
effort  I  recovered  my  composure  and  proceeded 
with  the  work  in  hand.     As  my  eye  fell  occasion- 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  27 

ally  on  the  quiet  figure  of  the  Princeton 
Coryphaeus  there  was  something  so  modest  and 
sympathetic  in  his  expression  that  I  was  reassured 
and  braced.  When  a  discussion  arose,  and  I 
appealed  to  him  for  his  opinion,  and  he  supported 
in  a  quiet  word  or  two  the  view  which  I  had  taken, 
I  began  to  feel  some  measure  of  actual  comfort. 
I  think  that  even  if  he  had  expressed  a  different 
view  I  should  have  been  helped,  so  quiet,  strong 
and  gracious  was  his  manner.  I  had  long  known 
the  scholar.  That  day  I  began  to  know  the  man, 
and  in  all  my  subsequent  meetings  with  him  the 
impression  deepened  of  his  manly  modesty  and 
courage. 

Dr.  Green's  courage  was  rooted  in  his  faith  and 
his  zeal  for  the  truth.  When  a  graduate  of  Yale 
Theological  Seminary  talking  to  Archibald  Hodge 
at  Dr.  Cuyler's  table  tried  to  make  garne  of 
Princeton  as  fossilized,  Hodge  said  to  him:  'The 
trouble  with  you  Yale  theological  professors  is 
that  you  only  teach  your  students  to  think. 
Thinking  sent  Adam  out  of  Paradise.  In  Prince- 
ton we  let  God  do  the  thinking,  and  teach  the 
students  to  believe."  Tt  was  the  great  goodness 
of  God  to  Princeton  that,  at  the  time  when  the 
central  subject  of  theological  debate  was  shifted 
from  the  domain  of  systematic  theology  to  that  of 
biblical  criticism,  He  gave  the  seminary  in  this 
department  a  man  who  believed  with  all  his  heart 
in  a  supernatural  revelation,  and  who  at  the 
same  time  saw  clearly  that  the  conservative 
position  must  be  defended  by  scientific  processes. 
And  perhaps  the  most  valuable  of  all  his  eminent 
services  to  the  Church  was  his  fearless  use  of  the 


28  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

higher  criticism.  The  careful  words  of  Dr.  Charles 
M.  Mead  are  none  too  strong:  "It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  among  the  higher  critics  who,  with 
patient  toil  and  profound  scholarship,  lead  in  the 
maintenance  of  sound  views  of  the  Bible  and  aim 
to  strengthen  the  foundations  of  a  reasonable 
faith,  will  always  stand  the  name  of  William 
Henry  Green."  Six  of  the  fifteen  volumes  which 
he  has  published  deal  with  these  problems  ex- 
clusively. His  masterpiece  in  this  line  is  his  work 
on  "The  Unity  of  Genesis."  Besides  these  fifteen 
volumes,  he  has  published  nearly  two  hundred 
review  articles  and  pamphlets,  philological,  ex- 
egetical,  critical,  not  counting  the  Expositions  of 
the  International  Lessons,  which  for  nine  years  he 
contributed  to  the  Sunday  School  Times.  These 
figures  will  give  some  idea  of  his  prodigious  in- 
dustry. 

His  courage  was  not  less  clearly  shown  in  his 
occasional  adoption  of  new  views  of  interpretation 
than  in  his  sturdy  defence  of  old  views  as  to  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  Scriptures.  He  knew  that 
his  suggestion  that  the  flood  was  not  universal 
in  extent,  but  only  universal  in  the  sense  that  it 
destroyed  the  whole  human  race,  except  the  family 
of  Noah,  would  seriously  disturb  many  good 
people.  He  knew  that  his  rejection  of  Usher's 
chronology  of  the  pre-Abrahamic  period,  and  his 
contention  that  the  Bible  gives  us  no  information 
as  to  when  the  world  was  created  or  how  many 
thousand  years  ago  man  appeared  on  the  earth, 
would  give  pain  to  many.  But,  having  satisfied 
himself   that   Usher   and    his   followers   had  mis- 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  29 

interpreted  the  fifth  and  eleventh  chapters  of 
Genesis,  that  Hnks  were  omitted  from  these  tables, 
and  that  they  were  never  intended  to  furnish  the 
basis  of  a  chronology  and  could  not  be  used  for 
that  purpose,  he  stated  his  conviction  candidly 
and  supported  it  with  his  customary  wealth  of 
learning  and  fairness  of  argument. 

The  estimation  of  his  ability  and  general  scholar- 
ship by  those  who  had  the  best  opportunity  of 
knowing  him  was  shown  more  than  thirty  years 
ago  by  his  election  to  the  Presidency  of  the  College 
of  New  Jersey,  which,  on  being  declined  by  Dr. 
Green,  was  tendered  to  Dr.  McCosh.  What  the 
faculty  of  Princeton  College  continued  to  think 
of  him  to  the  end,  is  shown  in  its  congratulatory 
address  at  his  fiftieth  anniversary  as  a  professor: 
"As  an  advocate  of  the  higher  criticism,  his  eminent 
learning  has  been  ennobled  by  intelligent  reverence 
for  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  by  true  spiritual  dis- 
cernment in  connection  with  that  linguistic  tact, 
literary  skill  and  historic  research  which  are 
requisite  in  the  study  of  all  ancient  literature. 
The  result  is  that  he  has  not  disturbed  the  faith 
of  the  unlearned,  while  commanding  the  respect 
of  scholars."  The  estimation  of  his  character 
and  learning  by  other  scholars  in  the  same  depart- 
ment may  be  inferred  from  his  selection  as  Chair- 
man of  the  American  Old  Testament  Revision 
Committee.  The  estimation  of  his  talents  and 
attainments  by  scholars  abroad  is  Indicated  in  the 
publication  of  some  of  his  works  in  German  and 
Spanish,  and  was  fully  and  warmly  expressed  in 
the  multitude  of  greetings  sent  him  on  his  fiftieth 


30  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

anniversary  from  the  great  Universities  of  Europe. 
Many  of  these  scholars  did  not  agree  with  him  in 
his  critical  views,  but  they  could  not  withhold 
admiration  for  the  simplicity  and  sincerity  of  his 
character,  the  greatness  of  his  attainments,  the 
courtesy  and  ability  of  his  discussions,  and  the 
unity  and  power  of  his  life — as  scholar,  teacher, 
author  and  man  of  God. 


CYRUS  HALL   McCCRMICK. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  31 


®  J)e  mtt  anb  ^orl^  of  €vtm  ^.  jWcCormick* 

Two  events  in  the  history  of  our  country  stand 
out  above  all  others  in  their  importance  and  far- 
reaching  effects.  One  was  the  achievement  of 
our  national  independence  by  the  thirteen  colonies 
on  the  Atlantic  slope,  and  the  other  was  the  con- 
quest of  the  vast  territory  which  stretches  across 
the  continent  from  the  Alleghany  mountains  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean. 

THE  SCOTCH-IRISH  STOCK. 

In  the  accomplishment  of  both  of  these  stu- 
pendous tasks,  which  have  made  America  what 
she  is  to-day,  the  providence  of  God  assigned  the 
brunt  of  the  battle  to  that  bold  and  hardy  and 
God-fearing  race  commonly  known  as  the  Scotch- 
Irish,  who,  coming  to  the  New  World  to  secure 
the  religious  liberty  denied  them  in  the  Old, 
pushed  through  the  already  settled  coast  lands 
and  took  possession  of  the  forest-covered  foot 
hills  and  long  fertile  valleys  of  the  Appalachians. 
There  "they  took  root  and  flourished,  stretching 
in  a  broad  belt  from  north  to  south,  a  shield  of 
sinewy  men  thrust  in  between  the  people  of  the 
seaboard  and  the  red  warriors  of  the  wildernessf." 

*Historical  address  delivered  November  1,  1909,  at  the  celebration 
in  Chicago  of  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Cyrus  H. 
McCormick,  the  eightieth  anniversary  of  the  founding  of  McCormick 
Seminary,  and  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  removal  of  the  Seminary 
to  Chicago. 

tTheocIore  Roosevelt,  The  Winning  of  the  West,  I.  p.  1.37. 


32  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

These  were  the  men  who  before  any  others  declared 
for  American  independence,  and  who  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  constituted  the  backbone 
of  the  Revohition.  "They  gave  Washington  thirty- 
nine  of  his  generals,  three  out  of  four  members  of 
his  cabinet,  and  three  out  of  five  judges  of  the  first 
Supreme  Court." 

These,  too,  were  the  men  who  led  the  way  across 
the  mountains  to  the  great  interior,  "the  pioneers 
of  our  people  in  their  march  westward,  the  van- 
guard of  the  army  of  fighting  settlers,  who  with 
axe  and  rifle  won  their  way  from  the  Alleghanies 
to  the  Rio  Grande  and  the  Pacific,"  who  by  battle 
and  by  bargain,  overcame  and  displaced  Indians, 
French,  and  Spaniards  alike,  and  gave  to  the 
American  people  the  vast  inland  empire  of  which 
your  own  great  city  is  now  the  metropolis. 

CAPPING  THE  WORK  OF  THE  NATION-MAKERS. 

It  is  to  the  "Presbyterian  Irish"  then,  as  Mr. 
Roosevelt  calls  them,  to  whom  we  are  chiefly 
indebted  for  the  winning  of  the  west.  It  was  they 
who  furnished  most  of  the  leaders  as  well  as  the 
rank  and  file  of  that  victorious  army  of  continental 
conquest,  such  as  James  Robertson,  who,  with 
John  Sevier,  tamed  the  rugged  wilderness  of  East 
Tennessee,  and  solved  there  the  problem  of  self- 
government,  giving  to  the  settlers  the  first  written 
constitution  ever  adopted  by  a  community  com- 
posed of  American-born  freemen;  Andrew  Lewis, 
the  leader  of  the  backwoods  hosts  in  their  first 
great  victory  over  the  Northwestern  Indians; 
William  Campbell,  their  commander  in  their  first 


*"  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  33 

great  victory  over  the  British  at  King's  Mountain*; 
Andrew  Jackson,  who  won  at  New  Orleans  the 
most  successful  land  battle  ever  fought  by  Ameri- 
can arms;  David  Crockett,  hunter,  humorist,  and 
hero,  who  died  in  the  Alamo  with  his  back  to  the 
wall  and  a  semi-circle  of  dead  Mexicans  around 
him  felled  by  his  swinging  rifle;  and  Sam  Houston, 
winner  of  the  independence  of  Texas  and  first 
president  of  that  republic.  These,  and  many 
other  leaders  in  our  winning  of  the  west  were  fur- 
nished by  the  Scotch-Irish,  to  say  nothing  of  their 
afterwards  putting  five  Presidents  in  the  White 
House. 

But,  while  it  was  these  robust  and  resolute 
pioneers  of  the  Scotch-Irish  stock  who  scaled  the 
Alleghanies,  subdued  the  wilderness,  subjugated 
the  savages,  displaced  the  aliens,  and  gave  to 
English-speaking  Americans  this  mighty  domain 
which  stretches  from  the  Appalachians  to  the 
Pacific  and  from  Canada  to  Mexico,  yet  this 
wide  and  fair  and  fertile  domain  which  is  now 
occupied  by  thirty-one  populous  and  prosperous 
commonwealths  could  never  have  been  what  it 
is  to-day,  at  least  on  its  present  prodigious  scale — 
a  region  of  fruitful  farms  and  thrifty  towns  and 
opulent  cities,  creating  new  wealth  at  the  rate  of 
sixteen  billions  a  year — a  continent  of  fabulous 
possessions  and  possibilities;  the  home  of  fifty 
millions  of  busy  and  happy  people;  the  granary 
of  a  world,  where  three  States  alone,  Minnesota 
and  the  Dakotas,  produce  enough  wheat  to  feed 
all  the  people  of  England — God's  greatest  answer 

*Theodore  Roosevelt,  The  Winning  of  the  West,  pp.  134-135. 


34  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

to  the  universal  prayer,  "Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread" — all  this,  I  say,  could  not  have  been 
had  it  not  have  been  for  the  genius  and  character 
and  work  of  still  another  man  of  that  same  Scotch- 
Irish  strain.  That  man  was  Cyrus  McCormick.  It 
was  his  invention  of  a  machine  for  cutting  grain  by 
horse-power  which  crowned  all  the  other  achieve- 
ments of  the  sterling  stock  from  which  he  sprang, 
and  without  which  all  the  other  exploits  of  those 
strong  nation-makers,  splendid  as  they  are,  would 
have  been  incomplete.  For  it  was  the  reaper  which 
flung  open  the  mighty  empire  of  the  northwest, 
by  making  possible  its  enormous  crops  of  grain, 
and  thus  stimulating  the  construction  of  thousands 
of  miles  of  railroad,  and  peopling  half  a  continent 
with  prosperous  settlers. 

As  long  ago  as  1859  the  great  lawyer,  Reverdy 
Johnson,  said:  "The  McCormick  reaper  has  al- 
ready contributed  an  annual  income  to  the  whole 
country  of  fifty-five  millions  of  dollars  at  least, 
which  must  increase  through  all  time."  And  in 
1861  Edwin  M.  Stanton  showed  upon  a  map  how 
"McCormick's  invention  in  Virginia  had  carried 
permanent  civilization  westward  more  than  fifty 
miles  a  year."  But  even  such  statements  as  these, 
remarkable  as  they  are,  do  not  measure  the  value 
of  his  invention  in  lessening  human  toil,  supplying 
mankind  with  cheap  and  abundant  food,  increas- 
ing the  world's  wealth  and  promoting  the  advance 
of  material  civilization.  For  they  take  account 
only  of  North  America,  whereas  the  reaper  has 
benefited  in  the  same  way  South  America,  New 
Zealand,  Australia,  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa. 
"To-day,"    as    Herbert    Casson    says,    "the    sun 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  35 

never  sets  and  the  season  never  closes  for  American 
harvesters.  They  are  reaping  the  fields  of  Argen- 
tine in  January,  Upper  Egypt  in  February,  East 
India  in  March,  Mexico  in  April,  China  in  May, 
Spain  in  June,  Iowa  in  July,  Canada  in  August, 
Sweden  in  September,  Norway  in  October,  South 
Africa  in  November,  and  Burma  in  December. 
It  is  always  harvest  somewhere"  and  the  music  of 
the  reaper  follows  the  ripple  of  the  ripened  grain 
all  round  the  world.  The  harvester  has  not  only 
made  America  the  best  fed  nation  on  the  globe 
but  has  enabled  the  whole  world  "to  take  dinner 
at  one  long  table." 

RANK  AS  EPOCH-MAKER. 

It  has  been  said  that  for  six  thousand  years  the 
human  race  was  hungry,  with  the  exception  of 
the  rulers  and  their  retinues.  To  the  masses  of 
mankind  life  was  an  agonized  struggle  for  food. 
Even  within  the  memory  of  men  now  living  there 
were  bread-riots  in  New  York  City,  and  starving 
men  fell  on  the  streets  of  Boston  and  Philadelphia. 
But  with  the  advent  of  the  reaper,  life  ceased  to 
be  merely  a  battle  for  bread.  With  the  world 
growing  wheat  at  the  yearly  rate  of  ten  bushels 
a  family,  as  this  marvelous  invention  has  enabled 
it  to  do,  the  gaunt  spectre  of  famine  has  vanished 
forever.  With  our  eighty-five  millions  of  Ameri- 
cans eating  twelve  thousand  million  loaves  of  bread 
a  year  and  yet  sending  a  thousand  million  dollars 
worth  of  food  to  other  nations,  the  pinched 
children  of  want  need  never  again  suffer  the  pangs 
of  hunger.  By  cheapening  the  bread  of  the  toiling 
millions  this  Virginia  inventor  "has  moved  all  the 


36  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

civilized  peoples  up  out  of  the  bread  line"  and  has 
opened  to  the  laborers  in  field  and  forge,  in  mine 
and  mill,  the  possibilities  of  a  higher  life.  "The 
Man  with  the  Hoe,"  the  stolid  drudge,  "brother 
to  the  ox,"  has  at  last  been  freed  from  the  all- 
absorbing  struggle  for  mere  existence  and  given 
some  opportunity  for  mental  culture  and  social 
recreation  and  the  refining  amenities  of  the 
home. 

It  is  evident  therefore  even  from  this  brief 
review  of  what  he  accomplished  that  the  man 
whose  life  and  work  we  commemorate  to-night 
was  not  merely  one  of  the  world's  great  inventors 
and  captains  of  industry,  but  an  epoch-maker  of 
the  first  magnitude,  the  creator  of  an  economic 
revolution,  the  greatest  promoter  of  agricultural 
development  that  ever  lived,  and  one  of  the  su- 
preme benefactors  of  the  human  race. 

It  would  be  incongruous  and  unseemly  to  use  the 
language  of  exaggeration  when  speaking  of  a  man 
as  genuine  as  Mr.  McCormick,  to  whom  anything 
fulsome  was  always  distasteful,  and  I  beg  to  say 
that  in  this  estimate  of  the  value  of  his  services 
to  mankind  I  have  endeavored  to  weigh  my 
words  and  to  refrain  from  any  overstatement  and 
that  after  a  careful  study  of  his  life  I  am  prepared 
to  prove  that  the  position  I  have  claimed  for  him, 
preeminent  as  it  is,  is  fully  justified  by  the  facts 
of  his  career  and  the  results  of  his  work. 

THE  OLD  HOME. 

"Rockbridge  County  (in  Virginia)  has  given 
birth  to  a  remarkable  number  of  distinguished 
men.     Among  them  have  been  soldiers  in  all  the 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  37 

wars  of  the  United  States,  judges  of  both  State 
and  federal  courts,  attorney-generals  of  Virginia 
and  of  other  States,  representatives  in  State 
legislatures  and  in  congress,  celebrated  ministers 
of  the  gospel,  and  missionaries  in  foreign  lands. 
This  same  county  has  given  a  general-in-chief  and 
president  of  the  republic  of  Texas,  a  United  States 
minister  to  France,  Russia  and  Austria,  governors 
of  Georgia,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Texas,  Tennes- 
see and  West  Virginia — while  eight  United  States 
senators  were  born  within  a  radius  of  six  miles  of 
Lexington"  (the  county  seat).  This  is  a  record 
which  as  Professor  Latane  has  said,  "may  well 
challenge  comparison  with  any  other  county  in  the 
land.  But  the  one  Rockbridge  name  that  has 
gone  around  the  world,  that  is  known  to-day  in 
every  civilized  land,  is  that  of  Cyrus  Hall  McCor- 
mick,  the  inventor  of  the  reaper.  In  every 
country  of  Europe,  in  Asiatic  Russia,  in  Persia, 
in  Australia,  in  South  America,  and  in  South 
Africa,  is  heard  the  click  of  his  reaper  and  the 
whir  of  his  binder*." 

Cyrus  Hall  McCormick  was  born  February  15, 
1809,  at  the  old  homestead,  Walnut  Grove,  mid- 
way between  Lexington  and  Staunton,  being  the 
eldest  of  eight  children,  six  of  whom  lived  to  grow 
up.  His  parents,  Robert  and  Mary  Ann  Hall 
McCormick,  held  an  influential  position  among  the 
people  of  the  Valley,  both  being  of  high  intelligence 
and  marked  force  of  character,  devout,  thrifty, 
and  well  to  do;  and  they  made  for  their  children 

*Prof.  J.  H.  Latane,  Bulletin  of  Washington  and  Lee  University, 
July,  1909,  p.  6. 


38  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

a  comfortable  and  happy  home,  teaching  them 
habits  of  industry  and  self-reHance,  and  training 
them  up  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of  the 
Lord.  There  was  no  coddHng.  There  were  even 
touches  of  Spartan  severity  in  the  training  of  the 
lad  whose  life  was  destined  to  be  one  of  stern  con- 
flict with  innumerable  difficulties  and  with  active 
and  relentless  opposition.  He  was  often  roused 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  work  in  the  fields. 
He  went  barefooted,  as  boys  of  his  age  ought  to 
do.  He  sat  on  a  slab-bench  in  the  little  log  school 
house.  He  learned  to  read  from  the  book  of 
Genesis.  His  other  text-books  were  Murray's 
Grammar,  Dilworth's  Arithmetic,  Webster's  Spell- 
ing-book, and  the  Shorter  Catechism.  On  Sun- 
days he  listened  earnestly  to  strong  preaching  in 
New  Providence  Church  and  sang  with  delight 
the  great  hymns  of  the  ages,  for  he  was  ever  a  lover 
of  music  and  ever  a  deeply  religious  nature.  The 
words  and  melodies  of  those  sweet  old  hymns 
remained  with  him  throughout  life,  sang  in  his 
heart  during  all  the  stress  of  his  stalwart  years, 
and  sustained  and  cheered  him  even  down  to  the 
end.  As  a  result  of  this  old-fashioned,  wholesome, 
character-making  Presbyterian  training,  the  key- 
notes of  which  were  industry,  honesty  and  re- 
ligion, he  carried  with  him  through  life  a  rare 
capacity  for  work,  a  dominating  sense  of  duty,  a 
clear  and  reverent  and  happy  faith,  a  quiet  scorn 
of  pretense  and  ostentation,  and  a  passionate  love 
for  justice  and  truth.  In  other  ways  too  heredity 
and  environment  played  their  usual  important 
part  in  the  making  of  his  character  and  the  de- 
velopment  of   his   gifts.     He   inherited    from   his 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  39 

father  his  genius  for  invention  and  from  his  mother 
his  skill  in  practical  affairs. 

Robert  McCormick  was  a  man  of  unusual  busi- 
ness acumen  and  enterprise  and  acquired  a  large 
estate,  1800  acres  in  all,  consisting  of  four  adjoin- 
ing farms,  on  three  of  which  he  operated  success- 
fully saw-mills  and  on  two  of  them  flour  mills. 
But  he  was  more  than  a  substantial  farmer  and 
man  of  affairs.  He  was  a  reader,  being  specially 
fond  of  history  and  astronomy.  He  had  an  im- 
agination. Naturally  therefore,  he  gave  much 
attention  to  the  mechanical  side  of  farm  life  and 
the  problem  of  labor  saving  machinery,  and  ac- 
quired considerable  local  fame  as  an  inventor. 
In  the  workshop  on  his  farm  he  fashioned  an 
ingenious  hemp-brake,  operated  by  horse  power,  a 
clover  sheller,  a  blacksmith's  bellows,  a  hydraulic 
machine,  a  threshing  machine,  and  a  hillside  plow. 
The  subject  to  which  he  gave  most  thought, 
however,  v.as  a  machine  for  the  cutting  of  grain. 
But  here  he  missed  the  way  entirely,  and  in  1831, 
after  various  experiments  extending  over  some 
twenty  years,  he  gave  up  the  project  as  hopeless. 
It  was  reserved  for  the  son  to  succeed  where  the 
father  failed. 

THE  YOUNG  INVENTOR. 

He  had  already  shown  that  he  had  inherited  his 
father's  inventive  talent.  While  still  a  lad  he  had 
one  morning  astonished  his  teacher  by  bringing 
to  school  an  elaborate  map  of  the  world,  showing 
the  two  hemispheres  side  by  side,  which  he  had 
drawn  upon  paper  in  ink,  and  then  mounted  by 
pasting  the  paper  on  linen,  and  hanging  the  whole 


40  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

on  two  varnished  rollers.  Such  aids  in  the 
school  room  are  common  enough  now,  but  that  a 
mere  boy  should  produce  such  a  thing  then  showed 
clearly  that  he  possessed  the  true  inventor's  power 
of  striking  out  a  path  for  himself.  When  only 
fifteen  years  old  he  had  made  a  grain  cradle  suited 
to  his  boyish  strength,  which  embodied  a  distinct 
improvement  over  any  other  form  of  that  imple- 
ment, and  had  swung  it  over  many  a  broad  acre 
of  wheat,  keeping  pace  with  the  full  grown  hands, 
all  unconscious  of  the  fact  that  he  was  destined 
to  release  millions  of  his  fellowmen  from  the 
severe  toil  of  which  he  was  then  having  a  practical 
experience.  At  the  same  early  age  he  too  had 
invented  a  hillside  plow  for  throwing  alternate 
furrows  on  the  lower  side,  and  a  little  later  a  self- 
sharpening,  horizontal  plow.  When  at  eighteen 
he  studied  the  profession  of  surveying  he  made  a 
quadrant  for  his  own  use  which  is  still  preserved, 
and  is  one  of  many  witnesses  to  the  accuracy  and 
thoroughness  of  his  workmanship.  He  had  al- 
ready made  an  improvement  on  Robert  McCor- 
mick's  machine  for  breaking  and  cleaning  hemp. 
For  years  he  had  seen  his  baffled  father  at  work 
on  the  mysterious  reaper;  and  in  the  same  year 
that  the  elder  McCormick  abandoned  the  task  in 
despair,  the  younger  inventor,  as  though  fired  to 
the  supreme  effort  of  his  genius  by  the  silent 
challenge  of  the  discredited  reaper  standing  outside 
the  shop  door,  rejected  decisively  his  father's 
model,  adopted  an  entirely  different  principle, 
and  in  a  few  months,  after  much  patient  brooding 
over    his    new    conception    and    many    ingenious 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  41 

efforts  at  combining  the  various  parts,  he  solved 
triumphantly  the  problem  of  the  centuries. 

THE  FIRST  REAPER. 

The  machine  which  he  constructed,  every  part 
of  which,  both  in  wood  and  iron,  he  fashioned 
with  his  own  hands,  consisted  of  first,  a  recipro- 
cating knife  with  a  serrated  edge  for  shearing  off 
the  stalks;  second  a  platform  to  receive  the  falling 
grain,  flexibly  affixed  so  as  to  accommodate  itself 
readily  to  the  irregularities  of  the  surface;  third  a 
horizontal  and  adjustable  reel  to  sweep  the  stand- 
ing grain  towards  the  blade  and  to  deliver  the 
severed  stalks  parallel  upon  the  platform,  in  a 
swath  ready  to  be  raked  off  and  bound ;  and  fourth, 
a  divider,  serving  to  separate  the  grain  to  be  cut 
from  that  to  be  left  standing. 

This  first  machine,  therefore,  crude  as  it  was  in 
construction,  being  built  by  hand  in  a  plantation 
shop,  nevertheless  embodied  all  four  of  the  cardinal 
features  which  all  subsequent  attempts  have  shown 
to  be  indispensable  to  a  successful  reaper.  Having 
created  the  true  type,  the  inventor  himself  never 
departed  from  it,  and  in  conformity  with  that 
type  all  other  successful  harvesters  have  since  been 
made.  "Despite  all  subsequent  invention,  and  it 
has  been  lavish,  no  one  has  contrived  a  successful 
substitute  for  McCormick's  original  plan.  From 
it  has  proceeded  in  unbroken  succession,  and  with 
remarkable  adherence  to  the  primary  arrange- 
ment, although  subsequently  enriched  with  many 
refinements  in  details  and  supplemental  improve- 
ments, the  reaper  that  has  taken  and  still  holds 
possession  of  the  markets  of  the  world." 


42  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

In  the  summer  of  1831,  then,  late  in  the  season, 
after  laboring  hard  to  complete  his  machine  in 
time  for  the  harvest  of  that  year,  Cyrus  H.  Mc- 
Cormick  hitched  a  horse  to  his  new  invention  and 
drove  it  clattering  into  a  small  patch  of  wheat  on 
his  father's  farm,  which  at  his  request  had  been 
left  standing,  for  the  first  test  of  its  powers.  The 
revolving  reel  swept  the  yellow  grain  against  the 
blade  and  in  a  moment  more  it  lay  in  a  golden 
swath  upon  the  platform,  from  which  it  was  raked 
off  by  a  young  laborer  named  John  Cash.  That 
was  the  first  grain  ever  successfully  cut  an^^where 
in  the  world  otherwise  than  by  manual  labor. 

Several  days  later,  after  making  certain  improve- 
ments in  the  reel  and  the  divider,  the  young  in- 
ventor gave  a  public  exhibition  of  his  machine  at 
Steele's  Tavern,  a  neighboring  village,  where  with 
two  horses  to  the  reaper,  he  cut  six  acres  of  oats 
in  a  single  afternoon,  a  feat  equal  to  the  work  of 
six  laborers  with  scythes.  He  had  opened  a  new 
era  in  the  history  of  agriculture. 

The  next  year,  1832,  he  gave  a  public  exhibition 
near  Lexington,  eighteen  miles  to  the  south  of  his 
home,  which  was  witnessed  by  fully  a  hundred 
people.  The  field  was  hilly,  and  the  machine, 
not  having  yet  found  itself,  at  first  worked  badly, 
slewing  as  it  moved,  and  cutting  the  grain  irregu- 
larly. There  is  a  story,  that  the  owner  of  the  field, 
seeing  this,  rushed  up  to  the  inventor  and  shouted 
"Here!  this  won't  do.  Stop  your  horses.  Your 
machine  is  rattling  the  heads  off  my  wheat,"  and 
that  various  bystanders  bluntly  pronounced  it  a 
humbug,  one  of  them  exclaiming,  "Give  me  the 
old   cradle   yet,    boys!"     It   was   a   disheartening 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  43 

moment,  but  just  at  this  juncture  one  of  the 
spectators,  the  Hon.  WilHam  Taylor,  a  man  of 
commanding  appearance  and  a  citizen  of  note, 
who  had  been  watching  the  work  with  keen 
interest,  came  forward  and  said,  "Pull  down  the 
fence  and  cross  over  into  my  field,  young  man. 
I'll  give  you  a  fair  chance  to  try  your  machine." 
This  offer  was  promptly  accepted,  the  reaper  was 
driven  into  Taylor's  field,  which  was  not  so  hilly, 
and  again  cut  six  acres  in  less  than  half  a  day. 

"Thus  it  was  that  at  twenty- two  years  of  age, 
this  young  inventor,  on  a  secluded  farm  in  Virginia, 
constructed  the  first  successful  mechanical  reaper." 
It  was  crude,  no  doubt,  as  all  inventions  are  at 
first,  but  it  was  a  reaper  that  reaped,  and  it  in- 
cluded every  fundamental  element  of  all  the  prac- 
tical harvesters  since  constructed,  and  laid  the 
lines  on  which  all  subsequent  invention  has  had 
to  move. 

MANUFACTURING  THE  MACHINES  IN  VIRGINIA. 

Though  he  had  mastered  the  essential  principles 
of  a  reaper  and  embodied  them  in  a  machine 
that  would  actually  cut  grain,  he  did  not  at  once 
apply  for  a  patent,  but  with  the  thoroughness 
characteristic  of  the  man  he  "subjected  his 
machine  to  repeated  tests  during  three  successive 
harvest  seasons  under  a  variety  of  conditions  and 
with  different  grain,  and  took  out  his  patent 
(June  21,  1834),  only  after  having  fully  vindicated 
and  exhibited  its  practical  value." 

Even  then  he  was  not  ready  to  put  his  reaper  on 
the  market,  for  as  he  himself  afterwards  said,  he 
would  not  "attempt  sales  either  of  machines  or 


44  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

rights  to  manufacture  until  satisfied  that  the 
reaper  would  succeed  well  in  the  great  variety  of 
situations  in  which  it  was  necessary  to  operate." 
"Thus  season  by  season,  from  1834  to  1839,  the 
inventor  patiently  carried  on  his  trials,  personally 
manufacturing  his  several  experimental  machines 
in  the  blacksmith  shop  at  Walnut  Grove.  This 
historic  building  can  still  be  seen  upon  the  old  farm, 
preserved  by  his  widow  and  children  as  the  birth- 
place of  the  mechanical  reaper."*  Some  weeks  ago 
I  stood  within  this  quaint  old  shop,  and  noting 
its  primitive  arrangements  and  appliances,  won- 
dered, as  hundreds  before  me  have  done,  at  what 
this  youth  had  accomplished  with  the  limited 
resources  at  his  command. 

The  two  things  he  most  needed  were  money  and 
cheaper  iron.  So  he  decided  to  build  a  furnace 
and  make  his  own  iron.  His  father  and  a  neigh- 
bor joined  him  in  the  enterprise.  They  built  the 
furnace,  made  the  iron,  and  had  taken  the  first 
step  towards  success  when  the  financial  crash  of 
1837  wrecked  the  business  and  plunged  them 
into  an  abyss  of  debt.  Cyrus  McCormick  gave 
up  everything  he  owned  to  the  creditors,  and  he 
and  the  rest  of  the  family  "slaved  for  five  years 
to  save  the  homestead  from  the  auctioneer."  In 
1839  he  began  in  earnest  the  manufacture  and  sale 
of  the  reaper  in  company  with  his  father  and  his 
two  brothers,  William  and  Leander.  The  prob- 
lem was  one  of  extreme  difficulty.  He  was  with- 
out capital.     There  were   no   railroads.     All   the 

*Reuben  Gold  Thwaites,  Cyrus  Hall  McCormick  and  the  Reaper,  p. 
243. 


4  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  45 

material  had  to  be  hauled  overland.  "The  sickles 
were  made  forty  miles  away,  the  blades,  six  feet 
in  length,  being  transported  on  horseback.  In 
this  manner  the  work  was  carried  on  in  the  old 
blacksmith  shop  at  Walnut  Grove— the  first  two 
machines  being  sold  in  1840;  two  others  m  1841, 
at  a  hundred  dollars  each;  seven  in  1842,  twenty- 
nine  in  1843,  and  fifty  in  each  of  the  years  1844 
and  1845."  The  first  consignment  sent  to  the 
west,  in  1844,  was  taken  in  wagons  from  Walnut 
Grove  over  the  mountains  to  Scottsville,  a  distance 
of  some  sixty  miles,  then  down  the  James  River 
canal  to  Richmond,  thence  by  sea  around  Florida 
to  New  Orleans,  and  then  up  the  Mississippi 
and  Ohio  rivers  to  Cincinnati. 

THE  MOVE  TO  THE  WEST. 

This  order  from  the  west  for  seven  machines 
re\^ealed  to  Mr.  McCormick,  who  was  now  a 
stalwart  man  of  thirty-six,  his  great  opportunity, 
and  he  was  quick  to  seize  it.  In  the  fall  of  the 
same  year,  1844,  with  $300.00  in  his  belt,  he  set 
out  on  horseback  for  the  west,  for  he  recognized 
at  once  that  the  great  interior  with  its  wide,  flat 
and  fertile  prairies  was  the  natural  home  of  the 
harvester.  "In  that  vast  land-ocean,  with  few 
laborers  and  an  infinity  of  acres,  the  reaper  was 
as  indispensable  as  the  plow.  To  reap  even  one 
of  these  new  States  by  hand  would  require  the 
whole  working  population  of  the  country."* 

In  your  own  State,  where  he  was  afterwards 
to   make   his   permanent   home,    a   sight   awaited 

♦Herbert  N.  Casson,  Everybody's  Magazine,  17,  p.  762. 


46  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

him  which  fired  his  zeal  to  fever  heat.  "He  saw- 
hogs  and  cattle  feeding  in  the  autumn  wheat 
fields,  which  could  not  be  reaped  for  lack  of 
laborers.  Five  million  bushels  of  wheat  had  grown 
and  ripened,  enough  to  empty  the  horn  of  plenty 
into  every  farmer's  home.  Men,  women  and 
children  toiled  day  and  night  to  gather  in  the  yel- 
low food.  But  the  short  harvest  season  rushed 
past  so  quickly  that  tons  of  it  lay  rotting  under  the 
hoofs  of  cattle.  The  sight  of  the  trampled  wheat 
goaded  McCormick  almost  into  a  frency  of 
activity."* 

On  he  rode  through  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Iowa, 
Missouri,  Ohio  and  New  York,  looking  everywhere 
for  manufacturers  who  would  build  his  machines. 
At  Brockport,  New  York,  on  the  Erie  Canal,  he 
found  two  men  who  appreciated  his  invention  and 
agreed  to  build  a  hundred  machines,  a  decision 
by  which  both  of  them  eventually  became  inde- 
pendently rich.f 

In  the  first  two  years  after  leaving  Virginia  he 
sold  240  reapers.  B}^  1847  a  Cincinnati  branch 
was  turning  out  machines  under  the  superin- 
tendence of  his  brother  Leander,  and  others  were 
being  constructed  in  Chicago  on  a  royalty  basis. 

ESTABLISHMENT  AT  CHICAGO. 

But  the  work  was  unsatisfactory.  He  was  in- 
volved in  many  troubles  because  of  bad  iron,  poor 
workmanship  and  unreliable  manufacturers.  So 
in  1847  "he  cut  the  Gordian  knot  by  building  a 
factory  of  his  own  in  Chicago."     The  place  was 

*HerI)ert  N.  Casson,  Everybody's  Magazine,  17,  p.  762. 
fldem. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  47 

then  but  little  more  than  a  country  town  built 
in  a  swamp,  but  he  clearly  foresaw  its  future  pre- 
eminence as  the  connecting  link  between  the 
great  lakes  and  the  great  west,  and  he  saw  at  once 
that  this  little  town  of  ten  thousand  people,  ugly 
and  forlorn  though  it  was,  was  the  place  where 
he  could  best  assemble  the  materials — steel,  iron 
and  wood — for  the  making  of  his  reapers,  and 
also  the  place  from  which  he  could  best  ship  the 
finished  machines  both  east  and  west;  and  thus 
it  was  that  Chicago  acquired  her  most  illustrious 
citizen. 

The  year  after  his  arrival  his  patent  expired, 
and  although  it  was  only  eight  years  since  he  had 
put  his  first  machine  on  the  market,  and  al- 
though it  was  acknowledged  that  his  invention 
had  conferred  incalculable  benefits  upon  the 
race  and  enormously  increased  the  wealth  of  the 
nation,  Congress  refused  to  grant  him  just  and 
deserved  protection  by  an  extension  of  the  patent, 
and  persisted  in  the  refusal  through  a  four-year 
contest  at  Washington,  waged  by  the  ablest 
lawyers  in  the  land.  Thus  the  basic  principles 
of  his  reaper  were  thrown  open  to  the  public,  and 
immediately  a  host  of  competitors  sprang  up, 
flooding  the  market  with  machines  in  which  his 
ideas  had  been  incorporated.  But  Cyrus  Mc- 
Cormick  was  an  unconquerable  man.  He  had  an 
indomitable  will  and  a  deathless  tenacity  of 
purpose.  Though  smarting  with  a  sense  of  the 
injustice  done  him,  he  faced  his  rivals  single- 
handed — Athanasius  contra  mundimi — and  deter- 
mined to  win  by  the  sheer  superiority  of  his  pro- 
duct.    And  win  he  did.     Perfecting  his  mechan- 


48  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

ism  year  after  year,  by  unceasing  experiments 
and  continued  improvements,  and  giving  a  written 
guarantee  with  every  machine  he  sold,  he  kept 
his  reaper  in  the  lead.  How  great  his  achieve- 
ment was  may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  of  more 
than  two  hundred  harvester  companies  that  took 
the  field  only  ten  survive  to-day. 

From  the  day  he  set  foot  in  your  city  he  pros- 
pered in  spite  of  innumerable  difficulties.  By 
1860  the  Chicago  works  were  producing  four 
thousand  reapers  in  a  single  year,  50,000  of  them 
in  all  were  clicking  in  American  wheat  fields, 
I'doing  the  work  of  350,000  men,  saving  $4,000,000 
in  wages,  and  cram.ming  the  barns  with  50,000,000 
bushels  of  grain."  For  years  he  had  struggled 
with  the  strength  of  a  Titan  to  overcome  mechani- 
cal difficulties  and  the  obstacles  of  nature,  to 
vanquish  indifference  and  prejudice,  and  to  beat 
down  opposition  in  the  courts,  in  Congress  and 
in  the  business  world,  and  now  at  last  he  was  on 
the  open  highway  to  boundless  success.  Great 
toils,  great  trials  and  great  triumphs  still  awaited 
him,  but  the  clouds  had  parted  and  his  path  was 
sunlit.     And  along  with  fortune  Fame  had  come. 

INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  REAPER  INTO  EUROPE. 

The  reaper  had  been  brought  to  the  attention 
of  the  British  public  at  the  World's  Fair  in  London, 
in  1851.  At  first  it  was  the  subject  of  some 
ridicule;  the  London  Times  called  it  "a  cross  be- 
tween an  Astley  (circus)  chariot,  a  wheelbarrow, 
and  a  flying  machine."  But  in  a  few  weeks,  when 
it  was  put  into  a  grain  field  and  given  an  actual 
trial,   and  when   its  instant  success  was  greeted 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  49 

with  a  burst  of  cheers  from  the  crowd,  and  when 
the  inventor  was  given  "not  only  a  first  prize,  but 
a  Council  Medal,  such  as  was  usually  awarded  only 
to  Kings  and  Governments,"  "The  Thunderer" 
changed  front  completely  and  admitted  that  the 
McCormick  reaper  was  equal  in  value  to  the  entire 
cost  of  the  exhibition.  William  H.  Seward  spoke 
of  it  as  a  National  triumph,  saying,  "No  General 
or  Consul  drawn  in  a  chariot  through  the  streets 
of  Rome  by  order  of  the  Senate  ever  conferred 
upon  mankind  benefits  so  great  as  he  who  thus 
vindicated  the  genius  of  our  own  country  at  the 
World's  Exposition  of  Art  in  the  Metropolis  of 
the  British  Empire."  At  the  Paris  Exposition  in 
1855  his  reaper  received  the  Gold  Medal  of  honor 
as  "the  type  after  which  all  others  are  made." 
Eight  years  later  after  a  field  contest  at  Hamburg, 
with  dozens  of  other  manufacturers,  all  making 
m.achines  more  or  less  like  his,  the  United  States 
Commissioner  cabled  to  New  York:  "McCormick 
has  thrashed  all  nations,  and  walked  off  with  the 
Gold  Medal."  At  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1867, 
he  was  decorated  by  Napoleon  the  Third  with 
the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor.  How  significant 
the  contrast,  as  Mr.  Casson  notes,  when  the  last 
emperor  of  France  fastened  this  badge  of  the 
Order  of  Merit  upon  the  breast  of  the  man  who 
"had  built  up  a  new  empire  of  commerce  that  will 
last  as  long  as  the  human  race  shall  eat  bread." 
Other  European  triumphs  followed,  and  in  1878, 
when  he  was  called  to  Paris  for  the  third  time  to 
receive  the  Grand  Prize  of  the  Exposition,  he  was 
elected  a  corresponding  member  of  the  French 
Academy  of  Sciences,   "as  having  done  more  for 


50  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

the   cause   of   agriculture   than   any   other   living 
man." 

HIS  MARRIAGE. 

But  the  Grand  Prize  of  all — the  supreme  blessing 
of  his  whole  career — conferred  not  by  the  hand 
of  any  earthly  potentate  but  by  the  King  of  kings 
and  Lord  of  lords — came  to  him  in  1858 — for  in 
that  year  he  married  Miss  Nettie  Fowler  of  Jeffer- 
son County,  New  York.  With  his  devout  ac- 
ceptance of  every  statement  of  Holy  Writ  he  had 
doubtless  always  known  that  "whoso  findeth  a 
wife  findeth  a  good  thing  and  obtaineth  favor  of 
the  Lord,"  but  he  was  now  to  learn  as  never  before 
that  "house  and  riches  are  the  inheritance  of  fath- 
ers, but  a  prudent  wife  is  from  the  Lord,"  that 
while  a  gracious  God  had  lavished  upon  him  bless- 
ings innumerable  during  his  childhood  and  youth 
and  earlier  manhood.  He  had  reserved  till  now  the 
best  of  all — the  crown  both  of  his  happiness  and 
usefulness.  It  behooves  me  under  the  circum- 
stances of  the  present  occasion  to  speak  with  some 
reserve  of  this  "elect  lady"  whom  we  all  revere. 
But  no  treatment  of  my  subject  would  be  complete 
and  no  understanding  of  some  of  his  greatest 
achievements  would  be  possible  without  some 
reference  to  her  whose  remarkable  talents  and 
earnest  piety  and  loving  spirit  and  gracious  address 
made  her  the  worthy  help-meet  of  the  gifted  man 
and  large-hearted  Christian  whose  life  she  bright- 
ened and  blessed  for  twenty-six  happy  years,  and 
who  since  his  death  has  continued  to  abound  in 
all  good  works. 

A  recent  writer  has  said  with  truth  that  "she 
has  been  for  fifty  years,  and  is  to-day,  one  of  the 


^  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  51 

active  factors  in  our  industrial  development.  Her 
exact  memory  and  keen  grasp  of  the  complex 
details  of  her  husband's  business  made  her  prac- 
tically an  unofficial  manager." 

It  is  perhaps  not  generally  known  that  the 
immense  McCormick  factory  here  owes  its  exist- 
ence to  Mrs.  McCormick.  When  the  great  fire 
that  swept  Chicago  in  1871  wiped  out  his  $2,000,- 
000  plant,  Mr.  McCormick  thought  of  retiring. 
He  still  had  an  ample  fortune  and  he  was  sixty-two 
years  of  age.  His  managers  advised  him  not  to 
rebuild,  because  of  the  excessive  cost  of  new  ma- 
chinery. 

"As  soon  as  the  fiery  cyclone  had  passed,  he 
and  his  wife  drove  to  the  wrecked  factory.  Several 
hundred  of  the  workmen  gathered  about  the 
carriage,  and  the  chief  engineer,  acting  as  spokes- 
man, said:  "Well,  Mr.  McCormick,  shall  we  start 
the  small  engine  and  make  repairs,  or  shall  we 
start  the  big  engine  and  make  machines?"  Mr. 
McCormick  turned  to  his  wife  and  said:  "Which 
shall  it  be?"  It  was  a  breathless  moment  for  the 
workmen.  "Build  again  at  once,"  said  Mrs. 
McCormick.  "I  do  not  want  our  boy  to  grow 
up  in  idleness."  "START  THE  BIG  ENGINE," 
said  McCormick.  The  men  threw  their  hats  in 
the  air  and  cheered.  They  sprang  at  the  smoking 
debris,  and  began  to  rebuild  before  the  cinders 
were  cold. 

Such  was  the  second  birth  of  the  vast  factory, 
which,  in  its  sixty  years,  has  created  fully  5,000,000 
harvesters,    and   is   now   so   magically   automatic 


62  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

that,  with  6,000  workmen,  it  can  make  one-third 
of  all  the  grain-gathering  machinery  of  the  world.* 

EFFECTS  OF  THE  INVENTION. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  beneficent  effect 
of  Mr.  McCormick's  invention  in  extending  the 
wheat  growing  area  of  the  world.  So  long  as 
the  sickle  and  the  cradle  were  the  only  means  of 
reaping,  the  production  of  grain,  which  is  man's 
most  important  food,  was  subject  to  rigid  limita- 
tions. The  difficulty  was  aggravated  in  America 
by  the  scarcity  of  farm  laborers  in  the  West. 
Ripe  wheat  will  not  wait.  The  harvest  season  is 
brief.  The  crop  must  be  garnered  within  a  period 
of  ten  days.  A  man  with  a  sickle  can  cut  but  a 
small  area  in  a  day  and  it  is  back-breaking  toil. 
This  area  was  considerably  enlarged  of  course  by 
the  introduction  of  the  cradle.  But  the  mechani- 
cal reaper,  drawn  by  horses,  leveling  the  grain  in 
sv/athes,  gathering  it  in  with  giant  gfasp,  and  toss- 
ing out  the  bound  up  sheaves,  has  vastly  increased 
the  capacity  of  the  human  harvester,  besides  free- 
ing him  from  the  hard  labor  of  wielding  the  sickle  or 
the  cradle,  and  straightening  his  weary  back,  and 
seating  him  comfortably  on  the  machine  as  the 
driver  of  the  team.  The  gathering  of  every  bushel 
of  wheat  used  to  require  three  hours  of  a  man's 
time.  "In  seventy-six  years  the  Reaper  has  re- 
duced the  time-price  of  harvesting  w^heat  to  ten 
minutes  a  bushel."  To  the  Reaper  therefore  we 
are  indebted  for  that  mighty  river  of  wheat 
which    now    flows    from    the    West,    turning    the 

*Herbert  N.  Casson,  Everybody's  Magazine,  17,  p.  764. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  53 

wheels  of   14,000   flour  mills,   and   giving  to  the 
millions  good  bread  at  low  prices. 

BY-PRODUCTS  OF  THE  REAPER. 

Along  that  life-giving  stream  scores  of  rich  cities 
have  sprung  up  like  magic,  a  network  of  railways 
have  criss-crossed  the  country,  huge  fleets  of 
whalebacks  have  covered  the  lakes,  and  hundreds 
of  gigantic  factories  have  been  established  for  the 
making  of  all  manner  of  farming  implements — 
for  the  reaper  gave  a  mighty  stimulus  to  agricul- 
tural invention,  and  in  its  wake  there  followed 
inevitably  a  multitude  of  other  labor-saving  de- 
vices for  the  sowing  and  cultivation  and  gathering 
of  crops  of  every  variety;  mowers,  tedders,  rakes, 
balers,  self-binders  for  corn  and  rice  as  well  as 
wheat,  corn  pluckers,  shellers  and  grinders,  grain 
drills,  harrows  and  cultivators,  involving  also,  of 
course,  an  enormously  increased  output  of  wood 
and  ore  from  the  forests  and  the  mines. 

One  of  the  most  important  of  the  indirect 
effects  of  Mr.  McCormick's  invention  was  its 
contribution  to  the  preservation  of  the  Union  as 
the  outcome  of  the  conflict  between  the  States. 
"During  the  Civil  War  the  reaper  was  doing  the 
work  of  a  million  men  in  the  grain  fields  of  the 
North."  In  1861  Edwin  M.  Stanton  said:  "The 
reaper  is  to  the  North  what  slavery  is  to  the 
South.  By  taking  the  places  of  regiments  of 
young  men  in  the  Western  harvest  fields,  it  re- 
leases them  to  do  battle  for  the  Union  at  the 
front,  and  at  the  same  time  keeps  up  the  supply 
of  bread  for  the  nation  and  the  nation's  armies. 
Thus  without  McCormick's  invention  I  fear  the 


54  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

North  could  not  win,  and  the  Union  would  be 
dismembered."  There  was  an  enormous  draught 
of  recruits  from  the  rural  districts — Mr.  Lincoln 
called  out  every  third  man — yet  the  crops,  in- 
stead of  decreasing,  increased.  Europeans  could 
hardly  believe  it,  when  told  that  the  North  was 
supporting  a  vast  army  and  yet  was  "selling 
enough  grain  to  feed  35,000,000  people  and 
sending  three  times  as  much  grain  to  England 
as  we  had  ever  sent  before." 

PATRIOT  AND  PEACEMAKER. 

This  contribution  of  the  reaper  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  Union  was  an  effect  of  his  invention 
which,  of  course,  Mr.  McCormick  did  not  foresee, 
though  the  preservation  of  the  Union  was  a  thing 
which  he  desired  with  all  his  'soul.  Born  and 
reared  in  the  South,  yet  living  for  years  in  the 
North,  he  understood  the  standpoint  of  both,  and 
his  views  of  secession  and  slavery  were  those  of 
an  unsectional  patriot  and  a  statesman.  A  North- 
ern writer*  has  said  with  truth  that  "No  other 
man  of  his  day  either  in  or  out  of  public  office 
was  so  free  from  local  prejudices  and  so  intensely 
national  in  his  beliefs  and  sympathies."  He  did 
not  want  the  Union  to  be  broken  by  secession, 
but  on  the  other  hand  he  did  not  want  the  Con- 
stitution to  be  destroyed  by  federal  reformers. 
He  wanted  the  South  to  be  freed  from  the  incubus 
of  slavery,  but  he  did  not  want  it  done  by  violence 
and  wrong  in  a  way  that  would  pour  upon  the 
nation  a  cataract  of  calamities.     He  had  himself 


*Herbert  N.  Casson,  The  Interior,  February  18,  1909. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  55 

forged  a  machine  that  would  do  the  work  of 
thousands  of  slaves  and  that  was  certain  to 
prevent  the  introduction  of  negro  labor  in  the 
wheat  States  of  the  West.  He  wanted  the  insti- 
tution of  slavery  abolished,  but  he  deprecated 
the  impatience  which,  refusing  to  abide  gradual 
and  peaceable  emancipation,  the  only  natural, 
true  and  safe  solution,  plunged  the  country  into 
war.  Before  hostilities  actually  began,  he  strove 
with  all  his  might  to  make  the  wrangling  partisans 
listen  to  reason,  and  even  after  the  war  was  at 
its  height  he  proposed  a  plan,  endorsed  by  Horace 
Greeley,  for  stopping  the  conflict  and  restoring 
peace.  But  the  plan  failed,  the  madness  con- 
tinued, and  the  war  was  fought  to  the  bitter  end. 

To  the  overpowered  and  impoverished  South 
he  was  one  of  the  first  of  the  magnanimous  men  of 
the  North  to  stretch  out  a  friendly  hand — but  un- 
fortunately all  men  in  the  North  are  not  mag- 
nanimous any  more  than  all  men  in  the  South — 
and  because  he  gave  help  to  prostrate  institutions 
in  his  native  State,  this  great-hearted  patriot 
who  loved  both  North  and  South  and  who  had 
labored  with  giant  strength  to  preserve  the  Union 
in  a  rational  way  was  actually  accused  of  disloyalty 
to  the  Union.  He  disposed  of  these  charges  with 
his  customary  vigor  and  conclusiveness  and  held 
steadily  on  his  lofty  and  beneficent  course. 

When  politics  invaded  the  courts  of  his  Church 
and  her  chief  benefactors  were  proscribed  and 
men  v.ere  deposed  from  the  boards  of  management 
of  her  institutions  and  others  put  in  their  places 
on  purely  political  and  party  grounds,  he  faith- 
fully pointed  out  to  the  Church  her  error  and  re- 


56  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

called  her  to  the  spirit  of  her  Lord  in  these  noble 
words:  "When  are  we  to  look  for  the  return  of 
brotherly  love  and  Christian  fellowship,  so  long 
as  those  who  aspire  to  fill  the  high  places  of  the 
Church  indulge  in  such  wrath  and  bitterness? 
Now  that  the  great  conflict  of  the  Civil  War  is 
past,  and  its  issues  settled,  religion  and  patriotism 
alike  require  the  exercise  of  mutual  forbearance, 
and  the  pursuit  of  those  things  which  tend  to 
peace." 

CHRISTIAN  AND  PHILANTHROPIST. 

Amid  all  the  exacting  labors  of  his  life  Mr. 
McCormick,  like  Henry  Van  Dyke's  peace-seeker, 
always  took  time  to  look  up  at  the  stars.  And 
therefore,  great  as  his  influence  was  upon  the 
material  interests  of  mankind,  his  influence  upon 
the  higher  interests  of  the  race  was  greater  still. 
He  did  not  think  more  of  machines  than  of  souls. 
For  fifty  years  he  was  a  consistent,  earnest,  fruitful 
member  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  and  from  the 
earliest  days  of  his  prosperity  to  the  end  of  his 
honored  life,  he  was  the  large-hearted  and  open- 
handed  friend  of  educational  and  religious  institu- 
tions, ever  ready  to  help  them  with  his  sympathy, 
his  prayers,  his  counsel  and  his  means. 

He  never  ceased  to  love  his  native  State.  "He 
never  grew  too  busy  or  too  famous  to  remember 
with  gratitude  the  days  and  scenes  out  of  which 
he  was  ushered  into  the  world  of  action."  In  his 
inaugural  address  as  president  of  the  Virginia 
Society  of  Chicago,  he  said:  "If  I  forget  thee,  O 
Jerusalem,  let  my  right  hand  forget  her  cunning. 
*     *      *     Virginia,"  he  continued,   "is  the  scene 


J.  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  57 

of  all  our  most  sacred  and  cherished  memories. 
There  stood  the  old  home.  There  flowed  the 
mountain  stream.  There  bubbled  the  spring  at 
which  we  quenched  our  youthful  thirst.  There 
were  the  friends  of  our  childhood,  now  widely 
scattered  or  dead." 

It  is  easy  for  the  public  to  mistake  the  nature 
of  a  man  whose  life  has  had  to  be  one  long  battle. 
It  was  perhaps  not  unnatural  for  some  to  think 
of  this  massive  and  unbendable  Scotch-Irishman 
as  hard-fibred  and  imperious  and  devoid  of  senti- 
ment. But  that  was  only  one  side.  We  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  other  in  the  earthquakes  of  laughter 
with  which  at  times  his  great  frame  was  shaken, 
and  in  the  upspringing  of  tears  at  sight  of  blue 
mountains  reminding  him  of  his  boyhood  home; 
and  in  his  devotion  to  the  memory  of  his  mother. 
One  day  in  his  later  life  when  speaking  of  flowers 
he  said,  "I  love  the  old-fashioned  pinks  because 
they  grew  in  my  mother's  garden  in  old  Virginia." 
There  were  many  beautiful  and  tender  things  with- 
in a  man  who  could  say  that.  And  one  of  those 
beautiful  and  tender  things  was  his  abiding 
affection  for  his  native  State.  Two  of  her  vener- 
able and  useful  institutions  held  specially  warm 
places  in  his  heart:  Washington  and  Lee  Uni- 
versity, in  his  native  county,  and  Union  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  in  Richmond.  It  is  well  known 
that  he  gave  to  the  former  a  handsome  sum  for 
the  establishment  of  a  chair  of  physics,  and  that 
in  1866,  when  our  Seminary  in  Virginia  seemed 
doomed  because  of  financial  losses  by  the  war, 
he  came  to  her  rescue  with  a  noble  gift  for  the 
endowment   of   the    professorship   of   Old    Testa- 


58  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

ment  Interpretation.  Had  It  not  been  for  this 
timely  help  in  those  dark  days,  Union  Seminary 
would  not  have  been  able  to  do  for  the  Church  the 
great  work  she  has  been  doing  for  the  last  forty 
years  in  the  furnishing  of  so  large  a  proportion 
of  our  ministers  and  missionaries. 

Mccormick  seminary. 

Of  course,  his  chief  work  on  behalf  of  Christian 
education  and  the  spread  of  the  gospel  was  the 
endowment  of  the  great  school  in  Chicago  which 
bears  his  name.  His  interest  in  this  institution 
rested  on  deep  conviction.  As  one  of  your  own 
former  professors  has  said:  "He  was  not  only  a 
Presbyterian,  but  he  was  also  a  believer  in  the 
theology  of  the  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith; 
and  it  was  his  wish  and  his  hope  that  the  Seminary 
should  be  a  center  of  power  for  the  defense  of  this 
theology,  and  through  its  graduates,  for  its  dis- 
semination throughout  the  wide  area  open  to  the 
Seminary's  influence." 

In  the  course  of  time,  through  another  far- 
reaching  benefaction,  he  provided  what  was  in 
some  measure  an  organ  for  the  institution.  A 
religious  newspaper  called  "The  Interior,"  which 
had  been  started  in  Chicago  to  represent  the 
Presbyterian  Church,  was  thirty-six  years  ago 
about  to  succumb  to  financial  difficulties,  when 
its  friends  and  owners  applied  to  Mr.  McCormick 
to  purchase  it.  So  in  1872  he  bought  the  paper 
as  requested,  placed  it  on  a  firm  financial  basis, 
secured  an  editor  of  rare  ability,  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Francis  L.  Patton,  succeeded  since  by  other  ac- 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  59 

compHshed  editors,  and  thus  made  It  one  of  the 
representative  rehgious  journals  of  America. 

Your  Seminary  could  never  have  been  what  it 
is  but  for  Mr.  McCormick's  adoption  of  it,  so  to 
speak,  in  1859,  and  his  subsequent  munificent 
relations  to  it.  Before  he  brought  it  to  Chicago 
the  institution  had  led  a  very  precarious  existence, 
having  no  solid  basis  and  no  assured  future. 
It  was  he  who  gave  it  all  three  of  the  elements 
which  Dr.  Nathan  L.  Rice  pronounced  absolutely 
essential  to  a  successful  theological  seminary — a 
suitable  location,  a  pecuniary  basis,  and  qualified 
professors  who  enjoy  the  confidence  of  the  Church ; 
and  it  was,  therefore,  he  who  made  possible  all 
its  later  development,  and  especially  its  remarkable 
growth  in  the  last  twenty-six  years. 

Like  most  of  our  other  theological  schools,  this 
Seminary  began  as  a  mere  department  of  a 
literary  institution,  Hanover  College,  Indiana. 
Like  them,  too,  it  soon  abandoned  this  form  of 
organization  as  unsatisfactory.  It  is  an  interest- 
ing fact  that  the  two  leading  seminaries  in  the 
Northern  Church  were  founded  by  Southern 
men — Princeton  by  a  Virginian,  Dr.  Archibald 
Alexander,  and  McCormick  by  a  North  Caro- 
linian, Dr.  John  Matthews.  Dr.  Matthews  began 
his  work  at  Hanover  in  1830,  and  there  continued 
it  with  various  assistants  for  ten  years,  when  it 
became  evident  that  in  order  to  get  its  proper 
development  the  theological  department  must  be 
detached  from  the  college  and  independently 
organized.  It  was  accordingly  moved  in  1840 
to  New  Albany,  Indiana,  where  for  several  years 
it  grew  and  prospered.     But  the  increasing  sharp- 


60  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

ness  of  the  controversy  in  regard  to  slavery,  in 
which  some  of  the  professors  took  a  prominent 
but  disastrous  part,  and  the  estabHshment  and 
immediate  success  of  the  Seminary  at  Danville, 
Ky.,  gave  the  New  Albany  school  another  serious 
check  and  led  eventually  to  its  removal  to  Chicago. 
The  decisive  consideration  in  favor  of  this  re- 
location was  an  offer  by  Mr.  McCormick  of  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars  for  the  endowment  of 
four  professorships  on  condition  that  the  seminary 
should  be  permanently  located  in  this  city.  The 
gift  was  accepted,  and  the  institution  established 
on  what  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  best  sites  for  a 
seminary  that  the  continent  affords.  To  this 
original  munificent  donation,  Mr.  McCormick 
added  frequently  and  largely  during  his  life-time, 
and  since  his  death  the  same  princely  benefactions 
have  been  continued  by  Mrs.  McCormick  and  her 
children,  so  that  now  the  seminary  owns  an  ex- 
ceedingly valuable  property  and  possesses  an 
equipment  for  its  great  work  that  is  unsurpassed 
perhaps  by  any  seminary  in  our  land. 

In  view  of  this  remarkable  and  continued  liber- 
ality, the  governing  bodies  in  1886  changed  the 
name  of  the  institution  from  ''The  Theological 
Seminary  of  the  Northwest"  to  "The  McCormick 
Theological  Seminary."  And  under  that  honored 
name  it  will  continue  to  send  forth  through  all  the 
future  its  successive  bands  of  soul-reapers. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  great  as  are  the  results 
of  Mr.  McCormick's  invention  in  enabling  men 
to  reap  the  material  harvest  of  the  world,  still 
more  beneficent  and  far-reaching  are  the  results 
of  his  consecrated  wealth  in  fitting  men  to  reap 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  61 

God's  Spiritual  harvest.  The  equipment  of  semi- 
naries is  obedience  of  the  most  practical  and 
fruitful  kind  to  the  command  given  by  our  Saviour 
when  he  said:  "The  harvest  truly  is  plenteous,  but 
the  laborers  are  few;  pray  ye  therefore  the  Lord 
of  the  harvest  that  he  will  send  forth  laborers  into 
his  harvest." 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  infer  from  what  I 
have  said  that  the  seminary  attained  its  present 
position  without  arduous  and  protracted  struggles, 
severe  reverses,  and  sore  disappointments.  And 
in  all  these  trials  he  suffered.  The  school  was  on 
his  heart.  Most  of  its  friends  appreciated  fully 
what  he  was  doing  for  it,  and  were  deeply  grateful, 
but  in  some  instances,  as  a  minute  of  your  faculty 
states,  "instead  of  admiration  and  gratitude  for 
his  sagacity  and  beneficence,  he  was  confronted 
with  no  little  opposition  and  opprobrium."* 
But  "they  that  sow  in  tears  shall  reap  in  joy. 
He  that  goeth  forth  and  weepeth,  bearing  precious 
seed,  shall  doubtless  come  again  with  rejoicing, 
bringing  his  sheaves  with  him." 

What  imagination  can  conceive  the  joys  that 
thrill  his  glorified  spirit  as  one  after  another  the 
hundreds  of  ministers  who  went  out  from  his 
seminary  arrive  in  the  land  of  light  when  their 
work  on  earth  is  done  and  tell  him  how  through 
the  training  here  provided  by  his  munificence 
they  have  been  able  to  give  the  bread  of  life  to 
their  fellow  men,  and  when  the  thousands  of 
ransomed  souls  who  have  been  gathered  into  the 
Kingdom   of  God   from  every  part  of  the  world 

*Minute  of  the  Faculty  on  the  death  of  Mr.  McCormick,  May  24. 
1884. 


62  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

by  the  men  from  his  seminary  tell  him  hoM'  under 
God  they  owe  to  him  their  knowledge  of  the  gospel 
and  their  deliverance  from  sin!  Ah,  yes,  "He  that 
goeth  forth  and  weepeth,  bearing  precious  seed" — 
a  seminary  is  literally  a  seedery — "shall  doubtless 
come  again  with  rejoicing,  bringing  his  sheaves 
with  him" — bringing  his  sheaves  with  him. 

THE  PERSONALITY  OF  THE  MAN. 

Cyrus  McCormick  was  cast  in  a  large  mould. 
He  was  a  massive  man  in  body  and  mind.  In  his 
stalwart  prime,  with  the  physique  of  a  gladiator, 
deep  chested,  broad  shouldered  and  ruddy,  with 
his  leonine  head  and  thick  black  hair,  with  his 
firm  face  and  strong  eyes,  he  made  an  extraor- 
dinary impression  of  physical  and  intellectual 
force.  And  the  longer  one  knew  him  the  more 
that  impression  of  power  grew.  He  was  the 
incarnation  of  decision,  energy,  tenacity  and 
courage.  But  all  men  of  power  are  not  great  men. 
The  question  remains  as  to  their  moral  qualities — 
the  substratum  of  character.  Are  they  men  of 
granite  convictions  that  will  defy  the  waves  of 
passing  opinion?  Are  they  men  of  regnant  con- 
science and  stainless  integrity?  One  of  his  friends 
who  knew  him  intimately  and  who  is  here  present 
to-night  has  happily  characterized  the  real  secret 
of  Mr.  McCormick's  success  as  follows:  "That 
which  gave  intensity  to  his  purpose,  strength  to  his 
will,  and  nerved  him  with  perseverance  that  never 
failed  was  his  supreme  regard  for  justice,  his 
worshipful  reverence  for  the  true  and  right.  The 
thoroughness  of  his  conviction  that  justice  must 
be  done,  that  right  must  be  maintained,  made  him 


/  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  63 

insensible  to  reproach  and  patient  of  delay.  I 
do  not  wonder  that  his  character  was  strong,  nor 
that  his  purpose  was  invincible,  nor  that  his  plans 
were  crowned  with  an  ultimate  and  signal  success, 
for  where  conviction  of  right  is  the  motive-power, 
and  the  attainment  of  justice  the  end  in  view,  with 
faith  in  God,  there  is  no  such  word  as  fail." 

His  ethical  perceptions  were  as  quick  and  keen 
as  his  business  acumen.  He  did  not  have  to  work 
his  way  laboriously  through  a  moral  problem;  he 
reached  his  conclusion  in  a  flash,  and  there  was 
no  uncertainty  or  doubt.  On  a  business  question 
his  judgment  was  clear  and  reliable;  on  a  moral 
question  it  was  almost  unerring. 

And  he  was  never  disobedient  to  the  heavenly 
vision.  What  conscience  commanded  he  did. 
In  an  age  accused  of  complete  absorption  in  things 
merely  material  and  of  indifference  to  the  means 
by  which  money  is  made  and  of  selfish  misuse  of 
accumulated  wealth,  he  set  an  example  of  honesty, 
integrity  and  benevolence  which  gave  him  a  dis- 
tinction among  the  mass  of  men  like  a  braid  of 
shining  gold  on  a  sleeve  of  hodden  gray.  His 
wealth  was  honorably  acquired  and  nobly  used. 
His  nature  was  not  dwarfed  but  enlarged  by  his 
devotion  to  business.  Some  men  become  mere 
business  machines;  their  nobler  powers  are  atro- 
phied— their  natures  are  narrowed  and  shrivelled 
by  the  ver}^  intensity  of  their  devotion  to  business, 
even  honorable  business.  It  was  not  so  with  him. 
With  all  his  sagacity  and  skill  and  success  in 
practical  affairs,  with  all  his  concentration  of 
energy  upon  whatever  enterprise  he  had  in  hand, 
he  remained  to  the  last  an  idealist,  high-souled, 


64  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

broad-minded,  sympathetic,  benevolent,  devout — 
an  Abou  Ben  Ad  hem,  who  proved  his  love  to  God 
by  his  love  to  his  fellow-men.  He  was  no  mere 
moralist;  the  core  of  his  character  was  his  faith 
in  God.  He  was  no  mere  humanitarian;  the 
mainspring  of  his  benevolence  was  his  gratitude 
and  love  to  our  Heavenly  Father. 

Religion  to  him  was  not  a  detached  and  oc- 
casional thing — a  thing  merely  of  times  and 
seasons.  It  permeated  and  controlled  his  whole 
life.  His  business  and  his  religion,  so  far  from 
being  relegated  to  different  compartments  of  his 
life,  were  interwoven  like  warp  and  woof.  In  the 
most  crowded  periods  of  his  career  "his  letters." 
as  Dr.  McClure  has  said,  "were  a  combination  of 
intense  devotion  to  business  detail  and  of  intense 
devotion  to  religious  principle."  At  the  close  of 
a  long  statement  about  machinery  and  contracts, 
he  writes  to  his  brother:  "May  the  Lord  grant  us 
all  grace  to  live  so  that  we  shall  have  hope  in  our 
death  as  had  our  dear  father,  and  to  this  end 
may  we  have  a  well-founded  hope  in  our  life.  The 
work  is  thine,  O  Lord.  Wilt  thou  draw  us  unto 
thee  by  the  cords  of  thy  love.  For  of  ourselves 
we  can  do  nothing.  May  we  be  delivered  from 
the  bondage  of  sin  and  have  that  peace  which  the 
world  cannot  give  or  take  away — peace  in  believ- 
ing, which  will  be  an  anchor,  sure  and  steadfast." 

Such  expressions  were  as  natural  to  him  as 
breathing.  He  believed  not  only  that  there  should 
be  business  in  our  religion,  and  religion  in  our 
business,  but  that  religion  is  our  business.  "I 
often  regret,"  he  writes,  "that  my  example  has 
not  been  better,  more  pious;  and  yet  I  have  often 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  65 

felt  a  concern  that  was  not  expressed.     Business 
is  not  inconsistent  with  Christianity;  but  the  latter 
ought  to  be  a  help  to  the  former,  giving  a  con- 
fidence   and    resignation,    after    using   all    proper 
means,    which    speak   peace   to   the   soul.       And 
again,  at  a  critical  juncture  in  his  business  atiairs, 
when  he  was  struggling  with  manufacturers  who 
had  broken  their  contracts,  he  says,  'This  is  the 
point  that  should  be  aimed  at,  the  feeling  that 
should    be    cherished— unconditional    submission 
and  resignation  to  the  will  and  hand  of  Provi- 
dence;   and    with    His   smiles    the    most   crooked 
ways   may  be   made   straight   and   chastisements 
converted  into  blessings.     But  for  the  fact  that 
Providence  has  seemed  to  assist  me  in  our  business, 
it  has  at  times  seemed  that  I  would  almost  sink 
under  the  weight  of  responsibility  hanging  upon 
m.e      But   I   believe  the  Lord  will  help  me  out. 
How   grateful   we   should    be!     How   humble   on 
account  of  unworthiness!     And  yet  how  rejoicing 
that  unworthy  as  we  are,  the  law  has  been  satis- 
fied, and  we  may  be  saved  by  faith." 

That  was  the  real  life  of  the  man.  And  so, 
during  his  declining  years,  when  chastened  by 
much  bodily  affliction,  he  was  sustained  and 
soothed  by  an  unfaltering  trust  and  bore  his  suffer- 
ings without  a  murmur. 

At  last  the  strong  staff  was  broken  and  the 
beautiful  rod.  The  powerful  constitution  which 
had  carried  him  victoriously  through  so  many 
conflicts  was  exhausted,  and  he  was  ready  for  his 
rest.  On  the  last  Lord's  Day  of  his  life  on  earth 
hearing  it  said  that  it  was  Sunday  and  a  beautiful 
day,  he  answered,  "Yes,  sweet  Sabbath."     As  he 


66  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

lay,  peacefully  awaiting  the  end,  he  uttered  tender 
words  to  each  of  his  children  and  his  wife,  taking 
their  hands  one  after  another,  then  while  they  knelt 
by  his  bedside  he  led  with  firm  voice  the  last 
religious  service  as  the  head  of  his  family,  and 
finally  sang  with  them  his  favorite  hymn, 

"O  Thou,  in  whose  presence  my  soul  takes  delight, 

On  whom  in  affliction  I  call, 
My  comfort  by  day,  and  my  song  in  the  night. 

My  hope,  my  salvation,  my  all." 

To  such  a  man  death  was  but  a  translation. 
On  Tuesday,  May  13th,  1884,  he  passed  from  this 
life  to  the  life  on  high,  leaving  behind  him  a  record 
of  achievement  as  inventor,  philanthropist  and 
man  of  God,  which  will  perpetuate  his  fame  "to 
the  last  syllable  of  recorded  time." 


WILLIAM   WALLACE  SPENCE. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  67 


OTiUiam  WKallace  ^pence 

Union  Seminary  Magazine,  October-November,  1901. 

Notwithstanding  all  that  has  been  said  about 
our  age  as  an  era  of  young  men,  it  is  undeniable 
that  much  of  the  world's  best  work  is  still  done  by 
men  who  are  well  advanced  in  years.  The  adage, 
"Old  men  for  counsel,  young  men  for  war,"  while 
true  in  general,  cannot  be  taken  literally,  as  many 
of  our  most  useful  men  of  action  are  old  men. 
Longfellow,  in  his  "Morituri  Salutamus,"  recog- 
nized this  fact  in  his  catalogue  of  literary,  achieve- 
ments by  the  elderly: 

"Cato  learned  Greek  at  eighty;  Sophocles 
Wrote  his  grand  Oedipus,  and  Simonides 
Bore  off  the  prize  of  verse  from  his  compeers, 
When  each  had  numbered  more  than  fourscore  years, 
And  Theophrastus,  at  fourscore  and  ten, 
Had  but  begun  his  Characters  of  Men; 
Chaucer,  at  Woodstock  with  the  nightingales. 
At  sixty  wrote  the  Canterbury  Tales; 
Goethe  at  Weimar,  toiling  to  the  last, 
Completed  Faust  when  eighty  years  were  past." 

Von  Moltke,  Bismarck,  Gladstone,  Hannibal 
Hamlin,  Justin  Morrill,  John  Hall,  Moses  Hoge, 
William  Henry  Green,  John  I.  Blair,  of  New 
Jersey,  and  Charles  Reid,  of  Norfolk,  are  exam- 
ples of  immensely  active  old  age  from  the  recent 
past,  while  we  still  have  with  us  such  leaders  in 
public  life  as  Lord  Salisbury,  such  preeminent 
soldiers  as  Lord  Roberts,  such  teachers  as  Professor 


68  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

Killen,  who  at  ninety-six  presided  at  the  recent 
commencement  of  our  theological  college  at  Bel- 
fast, such  vigorous  veterans  in  the  ministry  as 
Benjamin  M.  Palmer  and  Theodore  L.  Cuyler, 
and  such  masterful  spirits  in  the  business  world 
as  the  honored  citizen  of  Baltimore  whose  name 
stands  at  the  head  of  this  article. 

When  it  is  remembered  that  Mr.  Spence  is  now 
eighty-six  years  of  age,  the  following  list  of  his 
personal  offices  at  the  present  time  will  strike  the 
reader  as  a  remarkable  illustration  of  our  opening 
proposition.  He  is  the  senior  elder  in  the  First 
Presbyterian  Church;  president  of  the  Presby- 
terian Ear,  Eye  and  Throat  Hospital;  president 
of  the  trustees  of  the  Aged  Men's  Home;  president 
of  the  trustees  of  the  Aged  Women's  Home; 
treasurer  of  the  Egenton  Orphan  Asylum ;  manager 
of  the  Home  for  Incurables;  vice-president  of  the 
Mercantile  Trust  and  Deposit  Company;  vice- 
president  of  the  Baltimore  and  Annapolis  Short 
Line  Railroad;  director  of  the  Baltimore  and 
Lehigh  Railroad,  the  Eutaw  Savings  Bank,  the 
First  National  Bank,  and  the  Consolidated  Gas 
Company. 

These  multifarious  activities  at  his  time  of  life 
sufficiently  attest  his  extraordinary  capacity  for 
business  and  his  abiding  interest  in  philanthropic 
and  religious  work.  They  witness  also  to  the 
unique  position  which  he  holds  in  the  confidence 
and  esteem  of  his  fellow-men.  His  long  and  hon- 
ored preeminence  in  business  affairs  and  Christian 
work,  the  rare  combination  of  intellectual  force 
and  moral  principle  involved  in  such  a  career,  and 
the  variety  and   munificence  of  his  private  and 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  69 

public  benefactions,  characterized  as  they  have 
been  in  every  case  by  enHghtened  views  and 
sound  judgment,  all  mark  him  as  a  large-hearted 
and  large-minded  man,  whose  antecedents  and 
work  are  well  worth  the  study  of  young  men, 
especially  at  a  time  when  business  success  is  so 
often  sought  by  unworthy  methods  and  so  often 
used  for  unworthy  ends. 

William  Wallace  Spence  was  born  in  Edinburgh 
in  the  year  1815.     His  father  was  John  Spence, 
a  highly  respected  physician  of  that  city,  famous 
then,   as  now,    for  the   learning   and   skill   of   its 
medical  faculties.     His  mother  was  Sarah  Dickson, 
of  Prestonpans,  where  the  Young  Pretender  and 
his  Highlanders  won  their  delusive  victory  in  1745, 
and    close    to    Dunbar,    where   a   century   earlier 
Cromwell  won  his  decisive  victory  over  the  Coven- 
anters.    The  story  of  these  stirring  events,   and 
many  others  like  them  in  the  strenuous  history 
of  his  country,  must  have  soon  become  familiar 
to  the  boy  to  whom  his  parents  had  given  the  name 
of  Scotland's  national  hero,  and  must  have  con- 
tributed  to  the  formation  of  a  strong  and  self- 
reliant  character,  capable  alike  of  high  enthusiasm 
and  of  patient  and  persistent  pursuit  of  a  purpose. 
No  history  is  better  fitted  than  that  of  Scotland 
to  inspire  a  boy  with   both  of  these  contrasted 
qualities.     The  names  of  heroes  like  Wallace  and 
Bruce,  reformers  like  Knox  and  Hamilton,  poets 
like  Burns  and  Scott,  and  preachers  like  Ruther- 
ford  and   Chalmers,   are  associated   forever  with 
her  mountains   and   moors  and   lochs,   her  cities 
and    towns   and    clachans,    and    are    a    perpetual 
inspiration  to  her  youth.     The  influence  of  such 


70  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

a  history  upon  a  boy  of  young  Spence's  ante- 
cedents, training  and  natural  intelligence,  must 
have  been  a  considerable  factor  in  the  formation 
of  his  character.  But  his  best  heritage  was  the 
robust  faith  of  a  long  line  of  godly  forebears. 
For  generations  his  ancestors  had  cherished  the 
intelligent  and  sturdy  piety  which  has  been  Scot- 
land's crowning  glory.  His  parents  bottomed 
his  character  on  the  Word  of  God  and  the  Shorter 
Catechism,  and  his  subsequent  life  testifies  to  the 
thoroughness  with  which  he  learned  that  "man's 
chief  end  is  to  glorify  God." 

The  City  of  Edinburgh  in  the  time  of  Mr. 
Spence's  boyhood  was  one  of  the  chief  literary 
centers  of  the  world.  Her  great  university,  her 
magisterial  quarterly,  her  command  of  the  trench- 
ant pens  of  Jeffrey,  Macaulay,  Carlyle  and  Wilson, 
the  surviving  influence  of  Burns,  the  magical 
genius  of  Scott,  the  pulpit  influence  of  Chalmers 
and  Gordon,  and  the  general  preeminence  of  her 
poets,  philosophers,  theologians  and  critics,  cre- 
ated a  unique  literary  atmosphere  about  him,  the 
influence  of  which  he  has  never  ceased  to  feel,  as 
all  know  who  have  talked  with  him  about  books 
or  browsed  in  his  well-stocked  library. 

At  the  age  of  eighteen  he  resolved  to  come  to 
America,  and  in  the  winter  of  1833  he  set  sail  for 
New  York.  After  six  months  there  he  came  to 
Norfolk,  Va.,  sharing  the  then  general  belief  that 
this  city,  by  reason  of  its  fine  location  and  splendid 
harbor,  was  destined  shortly  to  become  one  of  the 
leading  Atlantic  ports,  possibly  second  only  to 
New  York  itself.  He  was  fortunate  in  getting  a 
situation    as    clerk    in    the   well-known    house   of 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  71 

Robert   Soutter    &   Sons,   a   firm   having  a  large 
trade    with    the   West    Indies   and    other   foreign 
lands.     The  knowledge  and  experience  gained  by 
Mr.    Spcnce    during    his    stay    with    this    house, 
from  1834  to  1839,  may  be  said  to  have  laid  the 
ground-work  of  his  subsequent  success  in  business. 
He  became  so  fam.iliar  with  the  West  India  trade, 
having  supplemented  his  knowledge  of  it  by  spend- 
ing some  months  in  the  various  islands  for  that 
purpose,   that   at  the   end   of   four  years  he   felt 
justified  in  beginning  business  on  his  own  account. 
For  two  years  more  he  conducted  his  business  at 
Norfolk,  and  then,  despairing  of  the  city's  reach- 
ing the  commercial  importance  which  had  been 
predicted   for  it,   and   which   it  is  only  now  be- 
ginning rapidly  to  attain,   he  removed  to  Balti- 
more, whose  foreign  and  domestic  trade  had  just 
received  a  fresh  impetus  from  new  western  con- 
nections,  which  gave  it  special  importance  as  a 
grain,   sugar  and   coffee   market.     In   connection 
w^ith    his    brother,    John    F.    Spence,    he    began 
business    in    Baltimore    under    the    firm-name    of 
W.  W.  Spence  &  Co.     His  former  experience  had 
developed  in  him  the  essential  qualities  of  quick 
perception,   sound  judgment  and  fearless  action, 
and  he  soon  took  a  leading  position  in  the  trade. 
The  shipping  merchants  of  Baltimore  recognized 
at  once  that  a  new  force  had   appeared  among 
them.     At    the    end    of    eight    years,    when    the 
house  had   become  permanently  established   and 
had  acquired  a  high  reputation,  extending  to  all 
the    countries   with    which    Baltimore    had    com- 
mercial  dealings,    Mr.   John   F.    Spence  went   to 
San  Francisco  to  open   a  house  there  and   take 


72  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

advantage  of  the  commercial  importance  to  which 
that  city  had  been  raised  by  the  successful  ter- 
mination of  the  Mexican  war  and  the  discovery 
of  gold  on  the  Pacific  coast.  And  so,  in  1849, 
Mr.  Andrew  Reid,  of  Norfolk,  a  gentleman  of 
remarkable  business  ability,  who  in  association 
with  his  brother,  Mr.  Charles  Reid,  had  gained 
a  valuable  knowledge  of  the  shipping  and  com- 
mission trade,  came  to  Baltimore  and  united  with 
Mr.  Spence,  thus  forming  the  firm  so  widely 
known  as  Spence  &  Reid.  The  two  partners 
were  admirably  adapted  to  each  other,  the  business 
grew  and  prospered,  the  firm  establishing  ex- 
tensive connections  in  Great  Britain,  the  British 
provinces.  South  America  and  the  West  Indies, 
sustaining  always  the  highest  credit  and  exempli- 
fying the  happy  combination  of  a  dignified  con- 
servatism with  alert  enterprise. 

In  1862  the  Civil  War  jeopardized  a  portion 
of  their  extensive  business.  On  one  occasion  one 
of  their  regular  coffee  packets  on  her  return  trip 
from  Rio  de  Janeiro  was  captured  by  a  Confederate 
cruiser,  and,  on  her  release,  was  seized  again  by 
a  Federal  cruiser,  and  obtained  her  final  release 
only  after  much  expense  and  difficulty.  Chiefly 
on  account  of  the  liability  of  such  occurrences  the 
branch  house  of  Spence,  Montague  &  Co.  was 
established  in  New  York,  James  C.  Spence  and 
S.  P.  Montague  being  made  the  resident  partners. 

The  success  of  the  firm  was  such  that  by  1874, 
after  twenty-five  years  of  happy  association,  both 
partners  felt  justified  in  withdrawing  from  gen- 
eral business. 

The   wealth   and   prominence   achieved  by  Mr. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  73 

Spence  have  brought  to  him  opportunities  for 
doing  good  which  he  has  recognized  and  improved 
in  a  large-hearted  and  open-handed  manner. 
Besides  his  generous  support  of  the  regular  work 
of  his  church  and  his  frequent  special  contribu- 
tions to  its  equipment  for  its  great  work  in  Balti- 
more, including  the  gift  of  the  exceptionally  sweet- 
toned  pipe-organ  which  leads  its  music,  and  besides 
his  interest  in  educational  enterprises  and  his 
active  part  in  the  organization  and  management 
of  benevolent  and  charitable  institutions,  he  has, 
in  many  ways  unknown  to  the  world,  brought 
relief  to  perplexed  hearts  and  comfort  to  sorrowing 
homes. 

While  cultivating  his  own  taste  for  the  fine 
arts,  he  has  been  a  liberal  patron  of  artists  by 
generous  purchases  and  by  organizing  art  ex- 
hibitions. In  1893  he  presented  to  the  city  of 
Baltimore  the  colossal  bronze  statue  of  Scotland's 
national  hero.  Sir  William  Wallace,  which  stands 
with  uplifted  sword  at  the  western  extremity  of 
the  lake  in  Druid  Hill  Park,  and  is  daily  admired 
by  hundreds  of  visitors.  Three  years  later  he 
presented  to  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital  a 
marble  replica  of  Thorwaldsen's  "Christ  the 
Divine  Healer."  It  stands  in  the  center  of  the 
main  hall,  under  the  great  dome,  so  that,  as  the 
donor  said  on  the  day  of  the  unveiling,  "To  every 
weary  sufferer  entering  these  doors  the  first  object 
presented  to  him  is  this  benign,  gracious  figure, 
looking  down  with  pitying  eyes  and  outstretched 
arms,  as  if  it  were  saying  to  him,  Come  unto  me 
and  I  will  give  you  rest."  Mr.  Spence  has  made 
frequent  gifts  to  the  Johns  Hopkins  University. 


74  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

But  the  benefaction  for  which  he  will  be  most  grate- 
fully remembered  throughout  the  South  was  his 
gift  of  $30,000  to  Union  Theological  Seminary  for 
the  erection  of  the  beautiful  fire-proof  library  to 
which  the  seminary  has  given  his  name.  An  ex- 
cellent oil  portrait  of  Mr.  Spence  occupies  the  place 
of  honor  on  the  walls  of  the  elegant  reading-room 
of  this  building,  so  that  all  coming  generations  of 
our  young  ministers  may  become  familiar  with  the 
strong  and  kindly  face  of  the  Christian  gentleman 
whose  enlightened  liberality  has  so  greatly  pro- 
moted the  comfort  and  effectiveness  of  their 
preparation  for  their  great  work  in  life. 

It  is  sometimes  supposed  that  those  who  attain 
to  wealth  and  high  position  miss  the  best  things 
in  life  in  the  way  of  personal  friendships,  or  that, 
at  least,  they  cannot  be  sure  that  those  who  profess 
to  be  their  friends  are  so  in  fact,  as  it  is  inevitable 
that  men  of  means  and  power  will  be  sought  by 
some  for  their  influence  and  aid  rather  than  for 
themselves.  Mr.  Spence  has  probably  had  his 
full  share  of  such  experiences,  but  no  man  ever 
had  truer  friends  or  less  doubt  of  their  sincere 
attachment,  and  none  ever  derived  more  true 
pleasure  from  his  friendships.  A  quiet,  undem- 
onstrative, dignified  gentleman,  with  the  pro- 
verbial caution  and  discrimination  of  his  race,  he 
does  not  form  friendships  hastily,  yet  he  has  the 
faculty  of  attracting  to  himself  choice  and  con- 
genial spirits,  who,  under  the  influence  of  his 
genuine  kindness,  thoughtfulness  and  comrader}^ 
soon  pass  from  the  stage  of  pleasant  acquaintance 
to  that  of  warm  and  abiding  friendship.  It  is 
difficult    for    any    one    who    knows    Mr.    Spence 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  75 

intimately  to  write  of  him  without  falhng  into  the 
strain  of  apparently  undiscriminating  eulogy. 
But  surely  no  language  would  overstate  the  case 
as  to  his  genius  for  hospitality.  In  1866  he  pur- 
chased "Bolton,"  the  famous  and  beautiful  resi- 
dence on  Hoffman  street,  which  was  erected 
more  than  a  century  ago,  and  in  the  drawing-room 
of  which  Jerome  Bonaparte  in  1804  met  the  lovely 
Betty  Patterson,  whom  he  afterwards  married. 
Mr.  Spence  added  to  the  house  a  third  story  and 
two  wings,  and  here,  aided  by  his  gentle  and  win- 
some wife,  an  "elect  lady"  indeed,  whose  recent 
death  was  one  of  the  heaviest  sorrows  of  his  life, 
and  by  his  daughters  and  granddaughters,  he  dis- 
pensed for  thirty-five  years  the  most  delightful 
hospitality,  making  "Bolton"  the  constant  centre 
of  a  charming  social  and  intellectual  life  and  the 
occasional  scene  of  the  most  elegant  and  elaborate 
functions.  He  has  recently  sold  this  fine  old 
place  to  the  State  of  Maryland  as  a  site  for  the 
Fifth  Regiment  Armory,  but  has  carried  to  his 
new  home  on  St.  Paul  street  the  old  "Bolton" 
atmosphere  of  comfort,  refinement  and  cordial 
hospitality.  To  chat  with  him  there  through  a 
winter  evening  on  matters  grave  or  gay;  to  sail  or 
drive  with  him  at  Mount  Desert  through  a  summer 
morning;  to  hear  him  read  to  a  small  circle  of 
guests,  selections  from  Scotch  Wit  and  Humor, 
or  describe  to  some  favored  friend  his  boyhood 
in  the  old  country,  or  his  coming  to  America;  to 
listen  to  his  devout  recognition  of  the  gracious 
Providence  which  directed  his  movements  in  the 
beginning  of  his  business  career;  to  follow  his  rem- 
iniscences of  Dr.  Chalmers,  whom  the  boy  Spence 


76  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

knew  in  Edinburgh,  and  of  Dr.  William  S.  White, 
from  whom  the  youth  Spence  received  his  deepest 
religious  impressions  in  Virginia,  and  of  Dr. 
Backus,  to  whom,  as  his  pastor  and  friend,  the  man 
Spence  gave  his  full  confidence,  tender  affection 
and  hearty  and  steadfast  support  in  Baltimore — 
any  one  of  these  experiences  reveals  new  and 
attractive  phases  of  a  clear  and  powerful  mind, 
a  strong  and  well-balanced  character,  a  warm  and 
loving  heart,  and  a  deep  and  thoughtful  piety. 

We  have  thought  it  right,  though  without  his 
knowledge  and  permission,  to  publish  in  this 
magazine,  which  is  read  by  so  many  of  his  friends, 
this  brief  account  of  the  outward  facts  of  his  life 
and  the  qualities  of  mind  and  heart  which  have 
determined  his  beautiful  and  beneficent  career, 
and  made  him  so  conspicuous  an  example  of  emi- 
nent and  honorable  success  in  business,  combined 
with  Christian  benevolence  and  manifold  far- 
reaching  usefulness. 


JOSKPH  BRYAN. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  77 


Memorial  Mass  Meeting,  Jefferson  Hotel  Auditorium,  Dec.  3,  190S. 

The  characteristics  of  cities  are  no  less  clearly 
marked  than  those  of  individuals.  In  the  activi- 
ties of  every  city  there  is  usually  one  dominant 
note.  Ancient  Tyre  was  a  city  of  commerce; 
she  cared  for  the  bodies  of  men.  Ancient  Athens 
was  a  city  of  learning;  she  cared  for  the  minds  of 
men.  Ancient  Jerusalem  was  a  city  of  religion; 
she  cared  for  the  souls  of  men.  Not  exclusively, 
of  course,  in  either  of  the  three  cases,  but  pre- 
dominantly. However  complex  and  varied  the 
activities  of  any  one  community,  however  inter- 
mingled the  things  of  the  body  and  the  mind  and 
the  spirit,  there  is  always  one  controlling  purpose, 
one  dominant  ideal.  When  Matthew  Arnold  said 
of  a  certain  American  city,  "It  is  too  beastly 
prosperous,"  he  did  not  mean  that  it  had  no  in- 
tellectual or  spiritual  resources — no  great  libraries 
or  schools  or  universities  or  churches — for  it  had; 
but  he  meant  that  the  material  and  commercial 
interests  over-shadowed  the  intellectual  and  spirit- 
ual; that  the  keynote  of  the  city,  the  chief  end  of 
its  being,  the  main  object  of  its  effort  was  material 
gain. 

What  is  the  keynote  of  Richmond?  Are  our 
people  sordid  or  noble?  Do  we  believe  that  a 
man's  life  consisteth  in  the  abundance  of  the  things 
which  he  possesseth?     Do  we  measure  men  by 


78  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

what  they  have  or  by  what  they  are?  Are  we 
Hving  for  mere  gain  or  for  character?  Is  our 
chief  aim  the  making  of  money  or  the  making 
of  men?  Is  our  dominating  principle  selfishness 
or  is  it  service?  I  think  we  can  answer  this  crucial 
question  without  hesitation  and  without  shame. 
We  are  citizens  of  no  mean  city.  A  community 
is  known  by  the  manner  of  man  that  it  honors. 
The  significance  of  this  movement  to  provide  a 
permanent  memorial  of  Mr.  Bryan  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  a  revelation  of  our  civic  character. 

He  was  universally  recognized  as  our  ideal 
citizen,  as  the  finest  embodiment  among  us  of  the 
qualities  that  we  admire  and  wish  to  conserve 
and  perpetuate.  He  was,  indeed,  a  man  of 
wealth,  but  the  essential  fact  about  that  is  that 
his  wealth  was  honorably  acquired  and  nobly 
used.  He  was  indeed  a  great  captain  of  industry, 
but  the  essential  thing  is  that  his  nature  was  not 
dwarfed  but  enlarged  by  his  devotion  to  business. 
"Some  men  become  mere  business  machines;  their 
nobler  powers  are  atrophied — their  natures  are 
narrowed  and  shrivelled  by  the -very  intensity  of 
their  devotion  to  business,  even  honorable  business. 
It  was  not  so  with  him.  With  all  his  sagacity  and 
skill  and  success  in  practical  affairs,  with  all  his 
concentration  of  energy  upon  whatever  enterprise 
he  had  in  hand,  he  remained  to  the  last  an  idealist, 
high-souled,  broad-minded,  sympathetic,  benevo- 
lent, devout."  At  a  meeting  in  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  a  year  or  so  ago,  I  heard  him  quote 
those  warning  lines  from  Goldsmith: 

"111  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 
Where  wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay." 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  79 

He  believed  that  with  all  his  soul.  Let  us  not  be 
misunderstood.  Every  intelligent  and  earnest 
man  must  rejoice  in  the  material  prosperity  of 
our  city,  the  industry  and  thrift  of  our  people, 
their  eager  interest  in  the  development  of  our 
resources  and  the  expansion  of  our  business.  But 
we  are  a  thrice  happy  people  in  the  fact  that,  in 
an  age  which  is  accused  of  complete  absorption 
in  things  material,  our  leaders  in  business  are  not 
indifferent  to  the  things  of  the  mind  and  the  heart; 
that  they  do  not  under-value  character  and  cul- 
ture; that  the  man  to  whom  we  point  as  our  model 
citizen,  the  finest  product  of  our  life,  was  not  only 
a  capable  and  successful  man  of  affairs  but  a  man 
of  culture  and  charm,  of  purity  and  faith. 

When  I  came  to  this  city  about  ten  years  ago 
and  got  a  view  at  close  range  of  its  business 
activities,  the  thing  that  struck  me  most  forcibly 
was  the  fact  that  the  great  majority  of  the  men  who 
controlled  its  capital  and  directed  its  energies  and 
molded  its  business  life  were  not  only  correct 
men  but  religious  men;  not  only  men  of  sound 
morality  but  of  pronounced  religious  faith.  That 
seems  to  me  to  be  truer  of  Richmond  than  of  any 
other  city  that  I  know;  and  that  is  the  glory  of 
our  town.  We  do  well  to  honor  the  memory  of  a 
man  who  in  a  community  that  is  rich  in  men  of 
lofty  ideals  stood  out  among  us  like  a  standard 
bearer  among  ten  thousand,  a  man  of  cultivated 
mind  and  gentle  heart  and  stainless  character 
and  devout  life,  an  Abou  Ben  Adhem,  who  proved 
his  love  to  God  by  his  love  to  his  fellow-men.  He 
was  no  mere  moralist;  the  core  of  his  character 
was  his  faith  in  God.     He  was  no  mere  humani- 


80  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

tarian;  the  mainspring  of  his  benevolence  was  his 
gratitude  and  love  to  our  heavenly  Father. 

Joseph  Bryan,  then,  was  a  rare  man.  His 
buo3^ant  spirit,  his  sparkling  mind,  his  bubbling 
enthusiasm,  the  verve  and  elan  of  his  whole 
manner,  made  him  everywhere  and  always  like 
a  burst  of  sunshine.  There  was  an  almost  boyish 
impulsivemess  about  him,  but  this  impetuous 
frankness,  instead  of  making  trouble  as  it  might 
easily  have  done  for  a  nature  less  noble,  only 
revealed  more  clearly  the  purity  of  the  springs  of 
his  being.  In  nothing  was  this  quickness  more 
noticeable  than  in  his  ethical  perceptions.  "He 
did  not  have  to  work  his  way  laboriously  through 
a  moral  problem;  he  reached  his  conclusion  in  a 
flash,  and  there  was  no  uncertainty^  or  doubt. 
On  a  business  question,  his  judgment  was  clear 
and  reliable;  on  a  moral  question,  it  was  almost 
unerring."  It  was  this  moral  refinement,  this 
high  strain  of  the  mind  and  spirit  which  gave  him 
a  distinction  among  the  mass  of  men  "like  a  braid 
of  shining  gold  on  a  sleeve  of  hodden-gray." 

And  it  is  the  priceless  value  to  a  community  of 
qualities  like  these,  so  splendidly  exemplified  in 
him,  that  justifies  this  movement  to  perpetuate 
the  memory  of  such  a  character  and  such  a  life. 
Let  us  then  provide  this  memorial  and  let  it  say 
to  our  children  and  our  children's  children,  "This 
was  our  ideal  citizen,  an  upright  and  able  man  of 
affairs,  an  unselfish  leader  of  civic  progress,  an 
open-handed  philanthropist,  a  golden-hearted  gen- 
tleman, and  a  reverent  and  radiant  man  of  God." 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  81 


Efje  Centennial  Celebration  of  Pinion  ®f)eo= 
logical  Seminar? 

The  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  founding 
of  Union  Theological  Seminary  in  Virginia  was 
celebrated  with  suitable  exerices  on  Sunday, 
October  13th,  and  Wednesday,  October  16th, 
1912.  On  Sunday  two  addresses  w^ere  delivered 
in  the  Seminary  Chapel,  one  on  "The  First  Fifty 
Years,"  by  Dr.  W.  W.  Moore,  and  the  other  on 
"The  Last  Fifty  Years,"  by  Dr.  W.  L.  Lingle. 

On  Wednesday,  the  two  controlling  Synods  hav- 
ing previously  taken  order  for  a  joint  celebration 
at  that  time,  the  Synod  of  North  Carolina  came  by 
special  train  from  Goldsboro  to  Richmond,  where 
the  Synod  of  Virginia  was  in  session,  and  the  two 
bodies  repaired  to  the  beautiful  campus  in  Ginter 
Park  for  the  exercises  of  the  afternoon.  A  large 
tent  had  been  erected  to  afford  shelter  in  case  of 
rain,  but  it  was  a  perfect  autumn  day,  and  on  the 
green  lawn,  "under  this  October  sun,"  some  fif- 
teen hundred  persons  assembled.  One  thousand 
of  these,  the  more  direct  representatives  of  the 
Synods,  wore  souvenir  badges  in  the  Seminary 
colors,  blue  and  white,  which  bore  a  picture  of 
Watts'  Hall,  the  date  of  the  celebration,  and  the 
college  toast — ''Vivat,  crescat,  f lor  eat  Seminarium! 
One  hundred  wore  besides  on  the  lapels  of  their 
coats  bows  of  white  ribbon.  These  were  the 
present  students  of  the  Seminary,  and  the  printed 


82  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

programme  stated  that  the  students  could  thus 
be  identified  and  that  they  would  be  glad  to  show 
visitors  about  the  grounds  and  buildings  and  to 
give  any  information  desired. 

The  President  of  the  Seminary  opened  the  exer- 
cises with  the  following  words  of  welcome: 

"Never  before  in  all  her  long  history  has  the  old 
Seminary  had  the  happiness  of  welcoming  home 
at  one  time  so  many  of  her  scattered  sons  and  fold- 
ing them  in  her  motherly  embrace.  In  1899  we 
had  the  honor  of  a  visit  in  these  halls  from  the 
General  Assembly,  and  it  so  happened  that  nearly 
half  of  the  commissioners  then  present  were  former 
students  of  this  seminary.  In  1905  we  had  the 
pleasure  of  entertaining  in  the  same  way  the  Synod 
of  Virginia,  three-fourths  of  whose  ministerial 
members  were  alumni  of  the  Seminary.  But 
neither  of  those  occasions  equalled  this  in  the  num- 
ber of  old  students  present.  To  all  these,  her  sons, 
who  have  gathered  today  under  the  ancestral  roof- 
tree,  she  extends  a  loving  welcome  and  upon  all 
she  pronounces  a  motherly  benediction.  And  to 
those  who  are  not  her  sons  but  her  nephews,  sons 
of  her  sister  seminaries,  she  extends  a  welcome 
no  less  warm  and  cordial.  To  the  ruling  elders  also 
of  the  two  great  Synods,  to  the  elect  ladies  who 
have  favored  us  with  their  presence  in  such  large 
numbers,  and  to  the  hundreds  of  our  visitors  who 
have  come  to  the  Seminary's  crowning  to  rejoice 
with  her,  she  extends  a  glad  and  grateful  greeting. 
To  everyone  of  you  she  says  in  the  genial  words 
of  Horace,  ''Tibi  splendet  focus .''  Nay,  to  everyone 
of  you  she  says  in  the  warmer  language  of  Scrip- 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  83 

ture,  'Come  in,  thou  blessed  of  the  Lord,  where- 
fore s'tandest  thou  without?' 

FeUcitous  responses  were  made  by  the  Moder- 
ator of  the  Synod  of  North  Carohna,  the  Rev. 
W.  McC.  White,  D.  D.,  and  the  Moderator  of  the 
Synod  of  Virginia,  the  Rev.  E.  T.  Wellford,  D.  D. 

Mr.  George  W.  Watts,  "President  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  and  the  greatest  benefactor  of  the 
Seminary,"  was  then  presented  as  the  presiding 
officer  of  the  occasion.  The  hymn,  "O  God  of 
Bethel,"  was  sung,  and  the  great  congregation 
was  led  in  prayer  by  the  Rev.  T.  S.  Wilson,  D.  D., 
grandson  of  the  Rev.  S.  B.  Wilson,  D.  D.,  who 
was  for  twenty-eight  years  a  professor  in  the 
Seminary.  The  addresses  of  Dr.  R.  F.  Campbell, 
Dr.  D.  M.  Sweets  and  Dr.  T.  H.  Rice  on  Union 
Seminary  in  the  Pastorate,  in  Religious  Journalism, 
and  in  Theological  Education  and  Religious 
Thought,  and  the  Poem  of  Dr.  W.  H.  Woods,  were 
all  listened  to  with  eager  interest.  This  part  of 
the  programme  was  closed  with  the  Benediction 
pronounced  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  R.  P.  Kerr,  of  Bal- 
timore. 

Refreshments  were  served  from  the  Refectory 
from  5  to  6  o'clock,  the  buildings  and  grounds  were 
illuminated,  and  a  reception  was  given  in  Rich- 
mond Hall  by  officers  of  the  Board  of  Trustees, 
members  of  the  Faculty,  and  ladies  of  the  Seminary 
Community,  assisted  by  Mrs.  M.  V.  Terhune 
("Marion  Harland"),  of  New  York.  It  was  a 
truly  delightful  social  commingling,  and  hundreds 
of  old  friends  met  who  had  for  years  been  widely 
separated. 


84  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

The  exercises  were  resumed  at  8  o'clock  in  the 
City  Auditorium.  No  other  building  in  Richmond 
would  have  held  the  crowd.  The  city  papers 
described  it  next  morning  as  "a  monster  mass 
meeting."  The  Presbyterians  turned  out  in  un- 
precedented numbers  to  show  what  they  thought 
of  their  Seminary,  and  to  listen  to  the  various 
addresses.  There  were  nearly  three  thousand 
of  them,  including  the  largest  number  of  Southern 
Presbyterian  ministers  ever  gathered  in  one  place. 
After  the  singing  of  the  hymn,  '*I  Love  Thy  King- 
dom, Lord,"  the  congregation  was  led  in  prayer 
by  the  Rev.  P.  H.  Hoge,  D.  D.,  son  of  Dr.  Wm.  J. 
Hoge,  one  of  the  former  professors  in  the  Seminary, 
and  great  grandson  of  Dr.  Moses  Hoge,  the  first 
professor. 

The  greetings  of  our  sister  seminaries  in  the 
South  were  happily  presented  by  Dr.  McPheeters 
of  Columbia,  Dr.  Vinson  of  Austin,  and  Dr.  Hemp- 
hill of  Louisville,  and  the  written  greetings  of 
thirty-five  other  seminaries,  colleges  and  univer- 
sities were  announced  by  the  Rev.  Prof.  T.  R. 
English,  D.  D.  Besides  these  there  was  a  great 
number  of  letters  from  the  old  students  and  other 
individuals  which  were  not  intended  for  publica- 
tion, but  which  gave  profound  pleasure  by  their 
warm  and  affectionate  greetings. 

The  Hon.  Wm.  Hodges  Mann,  who  was  intro- 
duced as  the  author  of  the  statement  that  he 
regarded  it  a  higher  honor  to  be  an  elder  in  the 
Presbyterian  Church  than  to  be  the  Governor  of 
Virginia,  made  a  hearty  and  ringing  address  of 
welcome,  to  which  the  Moderators  of  the  two 
Synods  responded  in  a  way  that  won  all  hearts. 


<^  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  85 

The  two  main  addresses  of  the  evening  were 
made  by  Dr.  Egbert  W.  Smith  and  Dr.  James  I. 
Vance,  both  graduates  of  the  institution  in  the 
class  of  1886,  on  Union  Seminary  in  Home  Mis- 
sions and  Union  Seminary  in  Foreign  Missions. 

Mr.  John  S.  Munce,  representing  the  Board  of 
Trustees,  announced  that  Mrs.  Nettie  F.  McCor- 
mick,  of  Chicago,  had  that  day  telegraphed  a 
hearty  message  of  congratulation  to  the  President 
of  the  Seminary,  saying  that  she  wished  to  give 
to  the  Endowment  $10,000  in  memory  of  her 
husband,  Cyrus  H.  McCormick,  Sr. ;  and  that  Mr. 
George  W.  Watts  had  also  marked  the  occasion 
by  making,  far  ahead  of  time,  the  final  payment 
of  $15,000  on  the  $45,000  pledged  by  hini  for  the 
endowment  of  the  Presidency  of  the  Seminary. 

With  the  singing  of  the  Doxology  and  the  pro- 
nouncing of  the  Benediction  this  memorable 
celebration,  successful  and  happy  in  every  par- 
ticular, was  brought  to  a  fitting  close. 

—  Union  Seminary  Magazine. 


86  APPRECIATIONS  AND 


l^fje  Jf  irgt  Jf  iftj)  iearg  of  Winion  aTfjeolosical 
Seminar  j> 

Centennial  Celebration,  October  IS,  1912. 

II  Timothy  2:2 — "The  things  that  thou  hast  heard  of  me  among 
many  witnesses,  the  same  commit  thou  to  faithful  men,  who  shall  be 
able  to  teach  others  also." 

"The  things  that  thou  has  heard  of  me" — that 
is,  the  essentials  of  the  Christian  faith  pubHcly 
committed  to  Timothy's  trust  as  a  minister  of  the 
gospel.  "Among  many  witnesses" — meaning  the 
presbyters  who  had  taken  part  in  Timothy's 
ordination.  "The  things  that  thou  hast  heard 
of  me  among  many  witnesses,  the  same  commit 
thou  to  faithful  men,  who  shall  be  able  to  teach 
others  also."  In  these  words  the  apostle  states  the 
two  fundamental  qualifications  of  ministers  of  the 
gospel.  They  must  be  men  of  character,  and  they 
must  be  men  of  capacity.  First,  they  must  be 
men  of  character,  Christian  character,  trust- 
worthy men;  or,  to  use  his  own  word,  "faithful" 
men;  and  secondly,  they  must  be  men  of  capacity, 
"able  to  teach  others  also,"  as  he  expresses  it — 
that  is,  they  must  be  men  of  the  requisite  in- 
tellectual force  and  training  to  instruct  their 
fellow-men.  Not  every  good  man  is  called  to 
preach.  Piety  is  an  indispensable  qualification 
for  the  ministry  but  it  is  not  the  only  qualification. 
Besides  piety,  the  minister  must  have  a  well 
disciplined  and  well  furnished  mind  and  the  power 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  87 

to  make  the  truth  clear  to  other  minds  and   to 
impress  it  on  other  hearts. 

The  branch  of  the  Church  to  which  this  Semi- 
nary belongs  has  always  paid  large  attention 
to  the  proper  preparation  of  the  minister  for  the 
duties  of  his  office.  The  educated  minister  is 
central  to  our  activities.  A  man  of  intelligence 
and  attainments  and  force  in  the  pulpit  is  essential 
to  fully  organized  Presbyterian  worship  and  work. 
The  Protestant  ideal  of  public  worship  is  quite 
different  from  that  which  obtains  among  Roman 
Catholics.  In  Roman  Catholic  worship,  the  prin- 
cipal functionary  is  a  priest  who  claims  to  offer 
sacrifice  and  who  performs  the  ceremonies  of  an 
elaborate  ritual.  The  appeal  is  chiefly  to  the 
senses  and  the  aesthetic  sensibilities.  Protestants, 
on  the  other  hand,  hold  that  the  minister  is  not 
a  priest  at  all  but  a  teacher.  His  function  is 
not  the  performance  of  ceremonies  but  the  in- 
culcation of  truth.  The  Protestant  churches 
make  their  appeal  to  the  mind  rather  than  to 
the  senses.  They  rely  upon  ideas  rather  than 
ceremonies,  because  they  are  convinced  that  it  is 
only  by  the  intelligent  apprehension  of  the  truth 
that  the  spiritual  life  can  be  truly  nourished  and 
developed.  The  difference  appears  even  in  their 
respective  styles  of  church  architecture.  The 
central  thing  in  a  Roman  Catholic  church  is  the 
altar;  the  central  thing  in  a  Protestant  church  is 
the  pulpit.  In  other  words,  Roman  Catholic 
churches  are  built  for  ceremonies  and  Protestant 
churches  are  built  for  preaching.  It  is  not 
without  significance  that  our  own  Church  in  par- 
ticular   has    been    historically    not    a    builder    of 


88  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

cathedrals  but  a  builder  of  schools  and  colleges 
and  seminaries. 

Now,  since  according  to  this  view  the  principal 
functionary  of  Christian  worship  is  a  trained 
minister,  and  since  his  main  business  is  the  ex- 
position of  scripture  and  the  inculcation  of  truth, 
it  follows  that  the  making  of  trained  ministers 
is  for  us  a  vital  matter.  It  has  been  so  recognized 
throughout  our  history.  The  Presbyterian 
Church  has  uniformly  insisted  upon  the  thor- 
ough education  of  its  religious  leaders,  so  much 
so  indeed  that  generally  speaking  the  public  mind 
associates  with  Presbyterian  ministers  the  ideas 
of  intellectual  stamina  and  ample  learning. 

How  has  our  Church  in  this  Western  World 
endeavored  to  meet  the  need  for  the  broad  and 
thorough  training  involved  in  this  Pauline  con- 
ception of  the  ministerial  office?  The  Presby- 
terian Church  in  America  was  composed  originally 
of  emigrants  from  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
For  many  years  the  ministers  of  their  various 
congregations  were  drawn  from  beyond  the  seas. 
As  the  Church  grew,  however,  and  the  population 
of  the  country  increased,  the  supply  thus  obtained 
proved  to  be  inadequate,  and  the  necessity  for  a 
native  ministry  became  more  and  more  apparent. 
This  necessity  was  accentuated  by  the  American 
Revolution.  The  political  separation  from  the 
mother  country  made  it  clearer  than  ever  that  we 
could  not  depend  for  a  permanent  supply  of 
ministers  upon  the  universities  of  the  Old  World, 
three  thousand  miles  away  in  what  was  now  a 
foreign  land  and  in  an  atmosphere  largely  out  of 
sympathy    with    American    ideals.     Accordingly, 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  89 

academies  and  colleges  were  established  from  time 
to  time  during  the  eighteenth  century  at  various 
places,  such  as  Princeton,  Lexington  and  Hamp- 
den-Sidney;  and  the  candidates  educated  in  these 
institutions  received  their  theological  training  by 
serving  a  sort  of  apprenticeship  under  approved 
divines  here  and  there  throughout  the  country 
who  directed  their  studies.  But  this  plan  also 
was  presently  seen  to  be  inadequate,  especially 
after  the  great  revivals  of  1799-1804,  and  it  be- 
came apparent  that  the  only  way  in  which  the 
demand  could  be  met  was  to  organize  regular 
institutions  for  theological  education. 

The  first  definite  step  in  this  direction  in  the 
American  Presbyterian  Church  was  taken  in 
1789,  when  a  class  of  seven  or  eight  young  men 
began  a  systematic  course  of  study  in  theology 
under  the  instruction  of  the  Rev.  Wm.  Graham, 
the  Rector  of  Liberty  Hall  Academy  near  Lexing- 
ton, Va.,  the  forerunner  of  Washington  and  Lee 
University.  Two  years  later  (1791)  the  Synod 
of  Virginia  appointed  Mr.  Graham  to  give  regular 
instruction  in  theology,  and  at  the  same  time 
projected  a  plan  for  the  raising  of  funds  to  main- 
tain a  permanent  system  of  theological  education. 
Mr.  Graham  continued  to  teach  theology  till  his 
resignation  of  the  rectorship  of  Liberty  Hall 
Academy  in  1796.  The  Synod's  plan  of  securing 
funds  for  a  permanent  theological  school  not 
being  promptly  carried  out,  the  Presbytery  of 
Hanover  began  to  move  in  the  matter.  It  de- 
termined to  raise  an  endowment  for  this  purpose 
which  should  be  under  its  own  control,  and  in 
1797   it  adopted   a  plan  drawn   up  by  the   Rev. 


90  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

Archibald  Alexander  for  the  education  of  minis- 
ters. But  still  the  enterprise  halted.  The  school 
failed  to  materialize.  The  needed  leader  and 
organizer  had  not  yet  appeared,  the  man  who 
should  realize  the  dreams  and  hopes  of  both  the 
Synod  and  the  Presbytery. 

But  in  1806  the  man  for  the  crisis  did  appear 
in  the  person  of  a  young  minister  onl}-  twenty- 
nine  years  of  age,  who  had  been  in  the  ministry 
only  about  two  years  and  who  was  at  that  time 
pastor  of  Cub  Creek  Church  in  Charlotte  County. 
His  name  was  John  Holt  Rice.  To  him  more  than 
to  any  other  man  the  Presbyterian  Church  in 
the  United  States  is  indebted  for  the  existence 
of  its  leading  seminary.  He  was  not  its  first 
professor,  but  he  was  its  real  founder.  His  first 
connection  with  the  work  was  in  the  capacity  of 
agent  to  secure  funds.  The  Presbytery  of  Han- 
over had  the  discernment  to  see  that,  young  as 
he  was  in  years  and  experience,  he  was  the  man  to 
realize  the  hopes  it  had  so  long  cherished  in  regard 
to  a  permanent  theological  seminary.  The 
memorable  action  which  put  him  in  the  lead  of  the 
movement  was  taken  in  1806.  In  April  of  that 
year,  to  quote  from  the  Minutes  of  the  Presby- 
tery, "The  Presbytery  of  Hanover  taking  into 
consideration  the  deplorable  state  of  our  country 
in  regard  to  religious  instruction,  the  very  small 
number  of  ministers  possessing  the  qualifications 
required  by  the  Scriptures  and  the  prevalence  of 
ignorance  and  error,  on  motion, 

Resolved:  1.  That  an  attempt  be  made  to  es- 
tablish  at   Hampden-Sidney   College   a  complete 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  91 

theological  library  for  the  benefit  of  students  in 
divinity. 

2.  That  an  attempt  be  also  made  to  establish 
a  fund  for  the  educating  of  poor  and  pious  youth 
for  the  ministry  of  the  gospel. 

3.  That  the  Rev.  Messrs.  Archibald  Alexander, 
Matthew  Lyle,  Conrad  Speece,  John  H.  Rice, 
Major  James  Morton,  Major  Robert  Quarles  and 
Mr.  James  Daniel  be  a  Standing  Committee  to 
manage  this  business  and  make  report  to  Presby- 
tery at  its  usual  meetings. 

4.  That  whatever  funds  are  raised  by  the  Com- 
mittee shall  be  vested  in  the  trustees  of  Hampden- 
Sidney  College.  The  appropriation  of  all  such 
funds,  however,  shall  forever  remain  with  the 
Presbytery." 

On  the  30th  of  April,  1806,  this  Committee 
met  and  appointed  Mr.  Rice  a  special  agent  to 
solicit  donations  in  books  and  money  for  the 
objects  proposed  throughout  the  whole  State; 
upon  which  he  repaired  to  Richmond  and  after- 
wards proceeded  to  Norfolk  to  secure  the  desired 
aid  in  behalf  of  the  infant  institution,  and  by  the 
spring  of  1807,  funds  to  the  amount  of  $2,500 
were  raised  for  this  purpose.  In  the  same  year, 
the  presidency  of  Hampden-Sidney  College  be- 
coming vacant  by  the  removal  of  Rev.  Archibald 
Alexander  to  Philadelphia,  Rev.  Moses  Hoge,  of 
Shepherdstown,  \'a.,  was  unanimously  chosen  to 
fill  the  vacant  office.  The  vote  of  the  trustees 
was  accompanied  by  pressing  letters  from  the 
brethren  of  the  Presbytery,  one  of  whom,  himself 
a  trustee  of  the  College,  says:  "What  I  wish  to 
present  to  you  for  your  serious  consideration  is  the 


92  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

importance  of  our  theological  school.  For  some 
years  to  come  the  head  of  the  theological  school 
must  be  the  president  of  Hampden-Sidney  College. 
Now,  the  eyes  of  all  who  are,  at  the  same  time, 
friends  of  this  institution  and  acquaintances  of 
yours,  are  directed  to  you  as  the  fittest  person 
in  the  compass  of  their  knowledge  for  a  professor 
of  divinity."  His  biographer  states  that  "The 
prospect  of  usefulness  which  seemed  to  be  ex- 
tended before  him  by  the  projected  establish- 
ment of  a  theological  seminary  at  Hampden- 
Sidney  was,  as  he  repeatedly  informed  his  friends, 
the  reason  why  he  decided  to  remove  thither." 
In  a  letter,  dated  January,  1810,  Dr.  Hoge  says: 
"It  was  chiefly  from  a  regard  to  a  theological 
seminary  lately  established  at  this  place  that  I 
was  induced  to  accept  the  presidency  of  Hampden- 
Sidney  College.  Of  that  seminary  you  have 
probably  seen  some  account  in  the  public  prints. 
It  has  already  been  useful,  and  will,  there  is 
reason  to  expect,  continue  to  be  so  for  ages  to 
come."  In  August,  1812,  he  writes:  "We  have 
now  nine  or  ten  who  intend  to  preach  the  gospel, 
and  about  the  same  number  of  my  alumni  are 
now  preaching."  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  the 
Seminary  was  already  in  existence  and  doing  good 
work  even  before  the  formal  action  of  the  Synod 
of  Virginia  in  1812.  But  in  that  year  the  Synod 
"Unanimously  resolved  on  the  establishment  of  a 
theological  seminary  and  unanimously  concurred 
in  the  appointment  of  Dr.  Hoge  as  their  professor," 
and  thus,  as  his  biographer  states  it,  "The  seminary 
instituted  by  the  Synod  embosomed  the  project 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  93 

of  the  Presbytery  of  Hanover."*  Satisfactory 
arrangements  were  made  with  the  trustees  of  the 
College,  by  which  Dr.  Hoge  could  perform  the 
duties  of  both  the  presidency  and  the  professor- 
ship of  theology,  and  for  the  remaining  eight  years 
of  his  life  he  prosecuted  the  work  with  signal 
ability  and  success,  sending  more  than  thirty 
young  men  from  his  classes  into  the  ministry. 

The  first  professor  in  this  Seminary,  then,  as 
established  by  the  Synod  of  Virginia  in  1812  was 
Moses  Hoge.  He  was  a  man  of  mark  as  saint  and 
scholar  and  preacher.  "Of  his  own  experience,  he 
said  that  he  had  never  known  the  time  when  he 
had  not  loved  the  Lord,  yet  he  never  knew  the  time 
when  he  thought  he  loved  Him  as  he  ought." 
The  power  of  his  Christian  character  is  well  illus- 
trated in  the  remark  of  John  Randolph,  of  Roa- 
noke, that  there  were  only  two  men  who  could 
bring  quiet  to  a  certain  court  green  on  court  day — 
Patrick  Henry  by  his  eloquence,  and  Dr.  Hoge  by 
simply  passing  through.  He  exercised  a  wide 
influence  in  his  time  by  his  writings  and  did  much 
to  stem  the  tide  of  French  infidelity  which  at  that 
time  swept  over  this  country.  But  it  is  as  a 
theological  teacher  that  the  Church  is  most 
deeply  indebted  to  him.  No  less  an  authority 
than  Dr.  Robert  L.  Dabney  has  declared  that  it 
was  Moses  Hoge  who  impressed  upon  the  Virginia 
ministry  that  moderate  type  of  evangelical  Calvin- 
ism that  has  ever  since  distinguished  it;  and 
Archibald  Alexander  was  in  his  youth  indebted 
to  him  for  more  correct  views  of  divine  grace  in 

*Ms.  "Life  of  Moses  Hoge,  D.  D.,"  by  his  son,  Rev.  John  Blair  Hoge. 


94  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

regeneration,  and  thus  Princeton  also  felt  his 
impress.  He  was  the  progenitor  of  a  line  of 
brilliant  and  powerful  preachers  of  his  own  name 
who  for  three  generations  have  in  the  ministry 
rendered  service  which  proves  them  to  be  worthy 
sons  of  their  honored  sire. 

Dr.  Hoge  died  in  the  summer  of  1820,  and  at 
the  following  meeting  of  Synod,  Dr.  Archibald 
Alexander  was  appointed  to  succeed  him  as  pro- 
fessor of  theology.  Dr.  Alexander  declined  the 
appointment,  and  the  Synod,  after  trying  in  vain 
for  two  years  to  fill  the  place  (a  task  rendered 
the  more  difficult,  doubtless,  by  the  fact  that 
Dr.  Hoge's  successor  in  the  presidency  of  the 
College  was  a  layman),  transferred  the  Seminary, 
with  the  funds  which  had  been  collected,  to  the 
Presbytery  of  Hanover,  in  trust,  to  hold  the  same 
for  the  object  of  its  founders  under  its  own  man- 
agement, but  subject  to  the  supervision  and  con- 
trol of  the  Synod,  and  in  obedience  to  the  call 
of  the  Moderator,  the  Presbytery  now  met  at 
Prince  Edward  on  the  16th  of  November,  1822,  to 
accept  the  trust  and  make  the  necessary  arrange- 
ments for  carrying  it  into  execution.  That  Pres- 
bytery, which  then  included  nearly  all  of  eastern 
Virginia,  had,  as  we  have  seen,  projected  a  theologi- 
cal school  even  before  the  synod  had  taken  the 
steps  above  described,  and  had  collected  a  small 
sum  for  the  support  of  it.  This  was  now  added 
to  the  funds  transferred  to  them  by  the  Synod, 
and  the  Presbytery,  having  resolved  to  reorganize 
the  Seminary,  and  having  appointed  a  new  board  of 
Trustees  for  it,  proceeded  to  make  choice  of  a 
professor;   and   having  solemnly   invoked   the  di- 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  95 

rection  of  Almighty  God,  unanimously  elected  the 
Rev.  John  Holt  Rice,  D.  D.,  pastor  of  the  First 
Presbyterian  Church,  of  Richmond,  to  the  office.* 

Dr.  Rice  had  just  been  elected  to  the  presi- 
dency of  Nassau  Hall  (Princeton  College).  After 
mature  deliberation,  he  declined  the  call  to  New 
Jersey,  though  at  a  great  pecuniary  sacrifice, 
and,  some  months  later,  on  June  2,  1823,  he 
announced  his  acceptance  of  the  Presbytery's 
appointment  to  the  work  in  Prince  Edward.  He 
was  then  recovering  from  a  severe  and  protracted 
illness,  and,  with  a  view  to  recruiting  his  health, 
he  made  a  journey  by  sea  to  New  York,  traveling 
thence  to  Saratoga  Springs  and  other  points,  and 
improving  the  opportunity  thus  afforded  to  raise 
additional  funds  for  the  proposed  Seminary,  in 
Albany,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Freder- 
icksburg and  other  places,  and  therefore  did  not 
reach  Hampden-Sidney  till  the  autumn.  Finding 
that  no  accommodations  had  yet  been  provided 
for  him,  he  accepted  the  invitation  of  President 
Cushing,  of  the  College,  to  lodge  with  him  tempo- 
rarily, and  soon  after  opened  his  school  of  the 
prophets,  with  three  students  (Jesse  S.  Armistead, 
Robert  Burwellf  and  Thomas  P.  Hunt),  in  one 
end  of  President  Cushing's  kitchen.  The  services 
of  Professor  James  Marsh,  of  Hampden-Sidney 
College,  were  secured  to  teach  the  Hebrew  lan- 
guage. 

On  Thursday,  January  1,  1824,  the  Board  of 
Trustees  met  in   the  college  church,   and   in  the 


♦Memoir  of  the  Rev.  John  Holt  Rice,  D.  D.,  by  Wm.  Maxwell. 
fGreat-Grandfather  of  Mr.  B.  R.  Lacy,  Jr.,  one  of  our  present  stu- 
dents. 


96  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

presence  of  a  large  congregation  the  Seminary 
was  formally  opened;  Dr.  Rice  was  regularly  in- 
stalled as  Professor  of  Theology,  and  delivered 
a  discourse  appropriate  to  the  occasion,  based 
upon  2  Timothy  III,  14-17:  "But  continue  thou 
in  the  things  which  thou  hast  learned  and  hast 
been  assured  of,  knowing  of  whom  thou  hast 
learned  them,  and  that  from  a  child  thou  hast 
known  the  Holy  Scriptures  which  are  able  to  make 
thee  wise  unto  salvation  through  faith  which  is 
in  Christ  Jesus.  All  Scripture  is  given  by  inspira- 
tion of  God  and  is  profitable  for  doctrine,  for 
reproof,  for  correction,  for  instruction  in  righteous- 
ness, that  the  man  of  God  may  be  perfect,  thor- 
oughly furnished  unto  all  good  works." 

The  whole  endowment  of  the  Seminary  on  the 
day  of  its  re-opening  consisted  of  about  $10,000. 
There  was  in  addition  a  Contingent  Fund  of 
about  $1,000  per  annum,  made  up  of  contribu- 
tions from  the  churches  of  the  Presbytery.  But 
there  was  no  building  as  yet,  nor  even  a  site  for 
one.  Both,  however,  were  soon  provided,  thanks 
to  the  ability  and  energy  of  the  indefatigable 
founder.  The  first  building,  a  three-story  brick 
structure,  which  is  now  the  eastern  end  of  the  old 
Seminary  building  at  Hampden-Sidney,  was  fin- 
ished in  1825. 

In  1826  the  Seminary  was  taken  under  the 
care  of  the  General  Assembly,  the  trustees  of  that 
body  taking  charge  of  the  funds;  and  in  1827  the 
Presbytery  of  Hanover  surrendered  the  institu- 
tion to  the  joint  management  and  control  of  the 
Synods  of  Virginia  and  North  Carolina.  In  com- 
memoration of  this  copartnership,  its  name  was 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  97 

changed  to  Union  Theological  Seminary.  From 
the  time  of  this  happy  association  of  the  two 
synods  in  its  support  and  control,  there  was  a 
more  rapid  increase  in  students,  funds  and  equip- 
ment. Dr.  Rice  toiled  terribly  at  his  task.  He 
literally  worked  himxself  to  death  that  the  institu- 
tion might  succeed.  It  did  succeed.  He  lived 
but  seven  years  after  beginning  his  work  as  pro- 
fessor, yet  in  that  short  time  he  made  it  one  of 
the  foremost  theological  schools  of  the  country, 
securing  for  it  a  large  building  for  lecture-rooms, 
chapel  and  dormitories,  besides  two  detached 
residences  for  professors,  a  fair  collection  of 
reference  books  as  a  library,  valued  at  $8,000,  three 
instructors,  and  nearly  forty  students. 

In  1831  he  died  and  was  succeeded  by  the  Rev. 
George  A.  Baxter,  D.  D.,  President  of  Washing- 
ton College,  Lexington,  of  whom  it  has  been  said 
that  by  natural  endowments  he  was  the  most 
talented  man  who  ever  served  the  Seminary  as  a 
professor.  Yet  the  institution  sorely  missed  the 
resourcefulness  and  administrative  capacity  of 
Rice,  his  phenomenal  mastery  of  detail,  his  con- 
suming enthusiasm  and  his  boundless  energy. 
Moreover,  the  country  was  just  entering  upon  a 
period  of  industrial  depression  and  the  Church 
was  trembling  on  the  verge  of  a  controversy  which 
was  destined  to  split  it  asunder.  Besides,  various 
other  seminaries  were  now  being  established  in 
different  parts  of  the  country,  so  that  for  twenty 
years  after  the  death  of  Rice  the  number  of  stu- 
dents was  small,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  able 
men  were  added  to  the  faculty  from  time  to  time, 
such  as  Dr.  Samuel  L.  Graham  and  Dr.  Francis 


98  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

S.  Sampson  in  1838,  and  Dr.  Samuel  B.  Wilson 
who  succeeded  Dr.  Baxter  in  1841.  In  1853  Dr. 
Robert  L.  Dabney  was  added;  in  1854  Dr.  Benja- 
min M.  Smith;  and  in  1856  Dr.  Wm.  J.  Hoge. 
The  number  of  students,  which  in  1851  had  fallen 
to  eleven,  fluctuated  for  the  next  ten  years, 
the  smallest  number  being  eighteen  in  1858,  and 
the  largest  thirty-nine  in  1860,  about  the  same 
number  that  had  been  enrolled  in  the  last  year 
of  Dr.  Rice's  life  thirty  years  before.  In  1860 
Dr.  Thomas  E.  Peck  was  elected  Professor  of 
Church  History,  so  that  when  the  war  broke 
out  the  Faculty  consisted  of  Drs.  Wilson,  Dabney, 
Smith  and  Peck.  The  progress  of  the  Seminary 
was  rudely  checked  by  the  great  conflict  into 
which  the  country  was  plunged  in  1861.  Its 
students  responded  to  the  call  of  their  country. 
It  is  one  of  the  glories  of  the  institution  that  it 
emptied  its  halls  into  that  immortal  army  which 
was  always  outnumbered  and  never  outfought, 
and  that  its  students  took  part  in  that  unparalleled 
struggle  in  which  the  North  won  the  victory  and 
the  South  won  the  glory.  One  of  the  most 
promising  of  these  students,  Captain  Hugh  A. 
White,  was  killed  in  battle  at  the  head  of  his  com- 
pany in  1862.  Another,  who  has  risen  to  deserved 
distinction  as  soldier,  friend  and  staff  officer  of 
Stonewell  Jackson,  minister,  editor  and  author, 
and  whom  we  all  honor  and  love,  sits  with  me  on 
this  platform  to-day.  And  last  night,  after  I 
had  finished  this  part  of  my  address,  I  received 
from  him  this  note: 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  99 

October  12,  1912. 
Dear  Dr.  Moore: 

I  enclose  a  copy  of  a  list  I  had  made  some  time  ago,  from 
the  General  Catalogue,  of  students  of  Union  Seminary 
who  were  in  the  Confederate  army.  It  occurs  to  me  that 
you  may  care  to  see  this  list  in  this  time  of  historic  interest 
in  the  Seminary.     Sincerely  always 

Your  friend, 

James  P.  Smith. 

I  do  care  to  see  this  list,  and  I  am  sure  you  will 
care  to  hear  it — it  is  the  honor  roll  of  the  Seminary 
in  those  sad  and  glorious  years.     I  give  it  entire: 

UNION  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY  IN  THE  CON- 
FEDERATE ARMY. 

Killed  in  Battle  3. 
Rev.  Dabney  Carr  Harrison,  Chaplain,  Fort  Donald- 
son, February  16,  1862. 

Edgar  Wirt  Carrington,  Seven  Pines,  May  31,  1862. 
Hugh  Augustus  White,   Captain,  Second   Manassas, 
August  31,  1862. 

Died  of  Wounds  Received  in  Battle  1. 
James  Wilson  Poague,  May  26,  1864. 

Died  of  Sickness  in  Camp  2. 

Samuel  M.  Lightner,  May  18,   1862. 
James  M.  Lynch,  June  29,  1862. 

Chaplains  14. 

Rev.  Moses  D.  Hoge  Rev.  H.  G.  Hill 

Rev.  Abner  C.  Hopkins  Rev.  P.  C.  Morton 

Rev.  Richard  McIlwaine  Rev.  W.  W.  Houston 

Rev.  Thos.  W.  Hooper  Rev.  H.  P.  R.  McCoy 

Rev.  E.  H.  Harding  Rev.  B.  B.  Blair 

Rev  L  C  Vass  Rev.  A.  B.  Carrington 

Rev.  T.  W.  Gilmer  Rev.  James  M.  Wharey 


100 


APPRECIATIONS  AND 


In  the  Ranks  44. 

Geo.  W.  Finley,  Captain  Arch  McFadyen 

K.  M.  McIntyre  W.  D.  Morton 

L.  H.  Yeargan  Josiah  M.  Smith. 

Jno.  S.  Young  J.  S.  Hunter,  Captain 

Wm.  E.  Hill  Jno.  W.  Primrose 

H.  R.  Laird  J.  A.  Wallace 

E.  C.  Gordon  E.  H.  Barnett 

R.  M.  Tuttle,  Captain  P.  P.  Flournoy 

J.  A.  Wood  J.  H.  H.  Winfree 

H.  M.  Anderson  J.  K.  Hitner 

W.  G.  Baird  Tazewell  M.  McCorkle 

A.  H.  Hamilton  M.  H.  Houston 

Frank  McCutchan  Edward  Lane 

R.  H.  Fleming,  C.  S.  Navy  Geo.  L.  Leyburn 

Cornelius  Miller  J.  M.  McIver 

Thornton  M.  Niven  G.  Nash  Morton 

Geo.  H.  Denny  W.  U.  Murkland 

W.  S.  Lacy  Jno.  M.  Goul 

Harvey  Gilmore  Jas.  W.  Shearer 

Daniel  Blain  H.  C.  Brown 

S.  Taylor  Martin,  Captain  H.  L.  Darnall 

G.  B.  Strickler,  Captain  James  P.  Smith,  Captain 

Killed  and  died  from  sickness 6 

Chaplains 14 

In  the  ranks 44 

Total 64 

The  number  of  students  fell  from  thirty-nine 
in  1861  to  four  in  1862;  and  these  four  were  young 
soldiers  who  had  been  captured  at  Rich  Mountain, 
had  been  released  on  parole  and  had  not  yet  been 
exchanged.  So  that  in  the  last  of  the  first  fifty 
years  of  its  history  the  Seminary  was  just  where 
it  was  in  the  first  of  those  fifty  years,  so  far  as  the 
attendance  w^as  concerned. 

During   the   hundred   years   of   its   service   the 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  101 

Seminary  has  educated  about  fifteen  hundred 
ministers.  Only  about  four  hundred  of  this 
number  belong  to  the  first  fifty  years,  but  the 
Hst  of  these  four  hundred  includes  such  names  as 
William  S.  White,  Drury  Lacy,  Daniel  Lindley, 
Theodorick  Pryor,  Benjamin  M.  Smith,  John 
Leyburn,  John  L.  Kirkpatrick,  George  D.  Arm- 
strong, William  Brown,  J.  M.  P.  Atkinson,  G.  W. 
McPhail,  John  H.  Bocock,  Stuart  Robinson, 
Francis  S.  Sampson,  Moses  D.  Hoge,  William  T. 
Richardson,  Jacob  Henry  Smith,  Robert  L.  Dab- 
ney,  Clement  R.  Vaughan,  William  Henry  Ruffner, 
William  A.  Campbell,  Alexander  Martin,  William 
Walter  Pharr,  Lindsay  H.  Blanton,  Richard 
Mcllwaine,  John  B.  Shearer,  Thomas  L.  Preston, 
E.  H.  Barnett,  A.  C.  Hopkins,  and  many  others 
equally  deserving  of  mention. 

Such  is  the  bare  outline  of  the  history  of  the 
Seminary  in  its  first  fifty  years,  its  founding, 
its  growth,  its  vicissitudes,  its  succession  of  hon- 
ored and  useful  professors,  its  varying  attendance 
of  students,  its  excellent  output  of  four  hundred 
well-furnished  ministers.  I  might,  of  course,  fill 
in  this  outline  with  a  great  multitude  of  facts 
concerning  the  gradual  enlargement  of  its  course 
of  study,  the  accumulation  of  its  library,  the  in- 
crease of  its  outfit  and  endowment,  and  its  gener- 
ous benefactors.  But  I  prefer  instead  to  try  to 
give  you  some  idea  of  the  spirit  and  ideals  and 
services  of  the  institution  in  those  early  years  by 
sketching  briefly  the  character  and  work  of  some 
of  the  men  who  have  put  upon  it  their  permanent 
impress  as  members  of  its  faculty.  For,  after  all, 
it   is   not   buildings   and   books   and   money   that 


102  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

make  a  great  seminary,  but  professors  of  strong 
personality  and  deep  consecration  and  ample 
learning  and  ability  to  teach  their  subjects  in  a 
vital  and  practical  way  and  to  inspire  their  stu- 
dents with  an  intelligent  and  deathless  enthusiasm 
for  the  gospel  which  they  are  to  proclaim. 

Of  Dr.  Hoge  I  have  already  spoken.  Of  Dr. 
Rice  it  is  important  that  I  should  give  you  some 
further  account. 


JOHN  HOLT  RICE. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  103 


fcfjn  Jlolt  ma 

John  Holt  Rice  was  born  in  Bedford  County, 
Virginia,  in  1777.  His  father  was  a  lawyer  and 
a  ruling  elder  in  the  Presbyterian  Church,  but 
though  an  intelligent  and  popular  man,  he  was  not 
prosperous,  so  that  the  boyhood  home  of  the  future 
theologian  was  one  at  first  of  only  moderate  com- 
fort and  afterwards  of  downright  poverty.  His 
mother,  a  cultivated  and  pious  woman,  sister  of 
a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  died  when 
he  was  about  twelve  years  old,  and  the  chief  care 
of  the  family  fell  on  his  elder  sister,  who  had  to 
do  all  the  hard  work  of  the  house.  John  showed 
what  manner  of  man  he  was  to  be  by  his  efforts 
to  lighten  her  burden,  helping  her  to  milk  the  cows, 
wash  the  clothes,  and  scour  and  rub  the  floors. 
When  his  father  miarried  again,  the  step-mother 
treated  him  with  great  rigor.  When  he  came 
home  from  school  at  night,  she  would  set  him  to 
his  regular  task  of  picking  cotton  and  then  send 
him  to  bed  without  a  candle.  But  the  instinct 
of  the  scholar  was  strong  within  him  and,  while 
his  step-mother  thought  he  was  fast  asleep,  he 
would  be  reading  his  Horace  by  the  blaze  of  the 
light-wood  which  he  had  hidden  away  for  this 
purpose,  and  when  the  light-wood  gave  out,  he 
would  go  on  reading  by  the  fire  alone,  bending 
over  the  book  on  the  hearth  till  he  would  almost 
singe   his   hair.     From   his   very   infancy   he   had 


104  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

manifested  that  passion  for  books  which  distin- 
guished him  throughout  his  Hfe. 

At  fifteen  years  of  age  he  made  pubHc  con- 
fession of  faith  in  Christ.  He  spent  a  year  and 
a  half  in  Liberty  Hall  Academy  (now  Washington 
and  Lee  University),  then  studied  for  two  years 
with  young  George  A.  Baxter,  who  was  teaching 
an  academy  in  Bedford  and  who  some  forty  years 
later  succeeded  his  former  pupil  as  professor  of 
theology  in  this  seminary.  In  his  eighteenth 
year,  young  Rice  secured  a  position  as  tutor  in  a 
family  at  Malvern  Hill  below  Richmond,  and  set 
out  for  that  place,  his  whole  outfit  being  $L75 
and  a  handkerchief  full  of  clothes.  A  year  or 
two  later  he  traveled  on  foot  a  hundred  and 
forty  miles  to  secure  the  position  of  tutor  in 
Hampden-Sidney  College.  There  in  1802  he 
married  Anne  Morton,  daughter  of  Major  James 
Morton,  "Old  Solid  Column,"  as  he  was  called, 
the  friend  and  comrade  in  arms  of  General  Wash- 
ington and  the  Marquis  de  la  Fayette.  This 
accomplished  and  consecrated  woman,  his  faith- 
ful helpmeet  throughout  his  life,  survived  him 
many  years  and  was  still  living  at  Hampden- 
Sidney  when  our  friend.  Dr.  James  P.  Smith,  was 
a  student  in  the  Seminary. 

Recognizing  his  call  to  the  ministry,  Mr.  Rice 
was  ordained  in  1804  and  became  pastor  of  Cub 
Creek  Church  in  Charlotte  County,  at  the  same 
time  working  a  farm  and  teaching  school  five 
days  in  the  week  to  supplement  his  meagre 
salary.  For  eight  years  he  labored  there,  minister- 
ing to  both  white  and  black,  and  proving  himself 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  105 

a  master  workman  as  a  country  pastor.  Then  In 
1812,  just  after  the  burning  of  the  Richmond 
theatre,  in  which  so  many  Hves  were  lost,  which 
represented  the  genius  and  wealth  and  fashion 
of  the  capital,  and  which  was  followed  by  a  strong 
reaction  against  immorality  and  frivolity,  he 
came  to  this  city,  in  response  to  urgent  calls,  for 
the  purpose  of  organizing  a  church  and  giving  a 
new  impulse  to  vital  religion,  and  here  for  ten 
years  he  showed  that  he  possessed  gifts  for  a  city 
pastorate  no  less  remarkable  than  those  which 
he  had  used  so  effectively  in  his  work  in  the 
country,  prosecuting  a  ministry  so  wise,  so  strong, 
so  loving,  so  fruitful,  that  the  church  which  he 
organized  has  ever  since  been  a  power  for  righteous- 
ness, a  fountain  of  blessing,  and  a  mother  of  other 
churches  through  which  the  everlasting  gospel 
has  been  proclaimed  at  home  and  abroad.  The 
beginnings  of  his  work  here  were  difficult  enough. 
He  preached  at  first  in  the  Masons'  Hall  and  the 
Capitol,  and,  though  large  crowds  came  to  hear 
him,  the  church  when  organized  consisted  of  only 
sixty  members.  The  salary  promised  the  minister 
was  small  and,  T  am  sorry  to  say,  was  not  paid  with 
promptness,  and  the  preacher  himself  was  poor,  as 
indeed  he  continued  to  be  throughout  his  life  on 
account  of  giving  all  his  accumulations  to  whatever 
religious  work  he  had  in  hand,  and  especially  later 
to  this  Seminary.  When  he  died,  a  slip  of  paper 
was  found  in  his  pocket  on  which  were  these 
words,  "It  is  necessary  that  I  die  poor."  The 
hardships  of  his  earliest  years  in  Richmond  may 
be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  on  one  occasion  the 
only  food  in  his  house  was  a  bag  of  black-eyed 


106  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

peas.  There  was  not  even  bacon  to  give  them 
flavor,  and  the  minister  had  not  a  cent  of  money. 
Mrs.  Rice  decided  to  sell  their  mahogany  dining 
table  to  meet  the  necessity.  The  husband  smiled 
and  said,  as  he  turned  towards  his  study,  'T  trust, 
my  dear,  the  Lord  will  provide."  "Just  then  a 
knock  was  heard  and  a  servant  was  found  standing 
at  the  door  wath  an  ample  supply  of  food  sent  by  a 
friend  who  lived  in  the  country  near  Richmond." 
These  hard  conditions  did  not  continue  long. 
The  church  increased  in  numbers  and  in  1816 
entered  its  own  house  of  worship,  which  was  then 
far  down  on  Franklin  Street  and  was  afterwards 
replaced  by  a  building  on  the  site  of  the  present 
City  Hall,  of  which  the  present  First  Church  is 
an  exact  facsimile. 

A  man  who  fearlessly  attacked  every  form  of 
evil  was,  of  course,  not  popular  with  bad  men 
and  some  of  them  showed  their  hostilit}^  in  a 
scurrilous  way.  Dr.  William  S.  White  in  his 
biography  gives  this  incident:  "On  entering  his 
study  one  morning  he  handed  me  a  letter  filled 
with  vulgar  abuse  of  him,  and  written  by  a  book- 
seller of  Richmond  of  no  small  pretensions.  The 
reading  of  it  filled  me  with  indignation.  I  won- 
dered how  he  could  endure  it,  or  what  he  would 
say  in  reply.  But  when  I  returned  to  him  the 
letter,  he  handed  me  the  reply  already  written, 
smiling  good-naturedly  as  he  did  so.  It  was 
couched  in  the  well-known  stanza  of  William 
Cowper,  with  only  the  prefix  'Sir' — 

"  'A  pious,  learned,  or  well-bred  man 
Will  not  insult  me,  and  no  other  can.' 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  107 

This,  with  his  signature,  abruptly  appended,  was 
the  whole  reply.     There  the  matter  ended." 

Dr.  Rice's  services  to  the  cause  of  religion  were 
not  confined  to  Richmond.  In  1819,  the  year  in 
which  he  served  as  Moderator  of  the  General 
Assembly  in  Philadelphia,  when  it  was  proposed 
to  elect  Thomas  Cooper  an  infidel  to  a  professor- 
ship in  the  University  of  Virginia,  Rice  published 
an  article  which  so  aroused  the  Christian  senti- 
ment of  the  State  that  Mr.  Jefferson  advised 
Cooper  to  decline  the  appointment,  which  he  did. 
Other  valuable  services  he  rendered  to  the  Church 
and  country  at  large,  as  will  be  shown  presently, 
but  valuable  as  were  his  services  while  in  Rich- 
mond, his  greatest  work  still  lay  before  him — 
namely  the  development  of  the  struggling  Semi- 
nary which  had  been  started  through  his  agency 
ten  years  before,  and  upon  this,  the  supreme  work 
of  his  life,  he  entered  as  already  stated  in  1824. 
The  venerable  Dr.  Robert  Burwell,  one  of  the  three 
members  of  his  first  class,  in  a  paper  which  some 
of  us  heard  at  Hampden- Sidney  eighteen  years 
ago,  told  us  many  interesting  things  about  the 
great  founder's  manifold  and  arduous  labors  while 
trying  to  get  the  institution  on  its  feet.  His 
lectures  were  written  from  day  to  day  and,  pressed 
by  innumerable  duties  of  other  kinds,  he  was  not 
always  ready  when  the  hour  for  lecture  came. 
So,  says  Dr.  Burwell,  he  would  tell  us  to  wait  and 
would  go  on  writing  and,  when  he  had  finished  the 
lecture,  would  deliver  it  to  the  class.  Such  was 
the  pressure  under  which  he  worked. 

There  were  indeed  times  at  long  intervals  when 
he  wisely  unbent  the  bow.     On  the  same  occasion 


108  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

at  Hampden-Sidney  eighteen  years  ago,  Dr. 
Moses  D.  Hoge  related  an  incident  not  of  the  grav- 
est character,  which  it  may  not  be  improper  to 
give  here  as  illustrating  Dr.  Rice's  love  of  good 
literature  and  his  method  of  relieving  the  dreadful 
strain  of  his  work  and  of  keeping  his  mind  fresh 
and  flexible.  The  Waverley  Novels  were  then 
coming  out  and  were  exciting  universal  interest. 
One  of  them,  just  published,  came  from  Rich- 
mond to  Hampden-Sidney  on  a  Saturday  morning. 

"Seizing  it  with  avidity,  he  commenced  its 
perusal.  He  became  absorbed,  fascinated;  time 
flew,  the  afternoon  came  and  then  the  night. 
The  doctor  read,  read,  and  read  on.  Presently 
he  heard  the  clock  strike  twelve.  Saturday  night! 
He  suddenly  shut  the  book  and  laid  it  down, 
possibly  with  some  compunction.  He  had  to 
preach  the  next  day.  The  next  morning  he  went 
into  the  pulpit  and  preached  one  of  his  noblest 
discourses.  When  the  services  ended,  an  old 
colored  woman  came  up  to  him,  and  grasping  his 
hand,  she  said,  "I  knew  we  were  going  to  have  a 
good  sermon  to-day,  for  late  last  night  as  I  was 
passing  your  house  I  saw  the  light  burning  in 
your  study,  and  I  said,  there  is  my  pastor  hard  at 
work  while  other  people  are  asleep;  there  is  my 
dear  pastor  beating  He  for  the  sanctuary."  The 
story  was  too  good  even  for  the  oil-beater  to  keep 
to  himself.  We  may  be  sure  he  did  not  tell  it  as 
an  illustration  "of  the  way  young  men  should 
prepare  for  the  pulpit." 

But  these  moments  of  recreation  were  rare. 
Generally  speaking,  he  labored  incessantly,  he 
took  no  vacation,  he  gave  himself  no  rest.  Wearied 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  109 

and  worn  out  by  his  constant  struggle  with  diffi- 
culties of  all  sorts,  he  was  not  unnaturally  at  times 
depressed,  and  Dr.  Burwell  says  that  on  one 
occasion,  when  the  class  came  to  his  study  un- 
expectedly, they  found  him  utterly  spent,  sitting 
beside  his  table  with  his  head  lying  on  his  arms, 
saying  to  himself  that  his  perplexities  and  diffi- 
culties would  surely  kill  him.  And  they  did. 
This  Seminary  cost  the  life  of  Rice. 

Yet  this  sorely  overworked  man  found  time  even 
for  authorship.  How  wide  and  strong  his  in- 
fluence in  this  way  still  is  on  some  of  the  notable 
young  men  of  our  time  may  be  illustrated  by  the 
statement  of  Robert  E.  Speer  made  in  this  chapel 
a  few  years  ago,  that  Dr.  Rice's  Biography  of 
James  Brainerd  Taylor  had  been  one  of  the 
influential  books  in  his  life. 

John  Holt  Rice  was  a  man  of  large  views  and 
bold  initiative  in  many  directions,  but  there  are 
five  things  of  a  creative  sort  that  he  did  which 
deserve  special  mention. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  he  organized  the  Virginia 
Bible  Society,  as  I  am  sure  our  friend,  Mr.  Porter, 
well  knows.  That  was  in  1813  and  antedated  the 
organization  of  the  American  Bible  Societ}^  It 
has  continued  to  this  day  its  beneficent  work  of 
disseminating  the  Word  of  God. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  he  established  in  1815 
the  Christian  Monitor,  and  in  1818  the  Virginia 
Evangelical  and  Literary  Magazine,  and  had  al- 
ready given  the  impulse  which  led  to  the  establish- 
ment of  the  first  weekly  religious  newspaper  in 
the  world,  and,  as  you  will  doubtless  hear  from 


no  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

Dr.  Sweets  on  Wednesday,  he  was  thus  the  father 
of  rehglous  journahsm, 

3.  In  the  third  place,  he  organized  the  first 
Young  Men's  Missionary  Society  that  ever  existed 
in  the  whole  of  that  territory  extending  from 
New  York  to  New  Orleans,  It  was  known  as  the 
Young  Men's  Missionary  Society  of  Richmond. 
It  consisted  of  about  forty  members.  And  it 
had  for  its  object  the  securing  of  men  and  means 
for  the  propagation  of  the  gospel  in  the  destitute 
portions  of  our  own  land.  It  was  thus  that  he 
led  the  way  in  the  matter  of  definite  and  dis- 
tinctive organizations  of  young  men  for  Home 
Mission  Work.     That  was  in  1819. 

4.  In  the  fourth  place,  he  led  the  way  in  the 
organization  of  one  of  the  greatest  existing  agencies 
for  the  evangelization  of  the  heathen  world,  the 
Presbyterian  Board  of  Foreign  Missions,  repre- 
sented now  by  the  executive  agencies  of  both 
great  branches  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the 
United  States.  This  he  did  by  an  overture  to 
the  General  Assembly,  dictated  from  his  death- 
bed, in  which  he  requested  the  Assembly  to  declare 
that  the  Church  "is  a  Missionary  Society,  the 
object  of  which  is  to  aid  in  the  conversion  of  the 
world,  and  that  every  member  of  the  Church  is  a 
member  for  life  of  said  society,  and  bound  in 
maintenance  of  his  Christian  character,  to  do  all 
in  his  power  for  the  accomplishment  of  this 
object";  asking  also  that  "it  be  earnestly  recom- 
mended to  all  church  sessions,  in  hereafter  ad- 
mitting new  members  to  the  churches,  distinctly 
to  state  to  candidates  for  admission  that  if  they 
join   the  church,  they  join  a  community,  the  ob- 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  111 

ject  of  which  is  the  conversion  of  the  heathen 
world,  and  to  impress  on  their  minds  a  deep  sense 
of  their  obHgation,  as  redeemed  sinners,  to  co- 
operate in  the  accomplishment  of  the  great  object 
of  Christ's  mission  to  the  world."  The  overture 
outlined  also  the  form  of  the  business  organization 
which  v;as  to  have  immediate  charge  of  the  work, 
prescribing  its  duties  and  officers;  and  further- 
more provided  for  the  co-operation  of  this  agency 
with  workers  of  other  denominations  in  the  same 
line.  This  overture  Dr.  Rice  forwarded  to  his 
friend,  Professor  Charles  Hodge  of  Princeton, 
requesting  the  concurrence  and  support  of  the 
brethren  there,  and,  to  make  a  long  story  short, 
the  measure  which  he  proposed  was  eventually 
adopted  (in  substance)  by  the  General  Assembly. 
The  Board  which  was  thus  organized  on  his  initia- 
tive now  expends  in  the  work  of  foreign  missions 
more  than  a  million  dollars  a  year,  and  its  evan- 
gelists, churches,  schools,  colleges,  theological 
seminaries,  hospitals  and  printing  presses  are 
making  known  the  unsearchable  riches  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  every  part  of  the  heathen  world.  Such 
are  some  of  the  results  of  the  great  movement 
started  by  Dr.  Rice  in  1831.  You  will  not  wonder 
then  that  I  spoke  of  him  as  a  man  of  creative  in- 
fluence in  Christian  work. 

5.  The  fifth  great  thing  that  he  did,  as  you 
might  almost  infer  from  the  impulse  that  he  thus 
gave  to  the  work  of  missions  at  home  and  abroad 
was  to  establish  a  theological  seminary,  which 
should  furnish  a  regular  supply  of  laborers  for 
the  home  and  foreign  fields,  and  about  fifteen 
hundred  of  them  have  gone  out  from  his  institu- 


112  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

tlon  to  proclaim  the  unsearchable  riches  of  Christ. 
This  Seminary,  as  that  marble  tablet  on  the  wall 
before  you  states,  is  his  lasting  monument. 

I  trust  that  enough  has  now  been  said,  albeit 
in  a  hurried  way,  to  show  that  John  Holt  Rice  was 
one  of  the  most  widely  useful  men  that  God  has 
ever  given  to  the  Church  in  America:  a  scholar 
of  rich  and  varied  attainments,  a  prophet  of  clear 
and  far-reaching  vision,  a  man  "that  had  under- 
standing of  the  times  to  know  what  Israel  ought 
to  do,"  a  leader  of  extraordinary  enterprise  and 
skill  in  practical  affairs,  and  an  epoch-maker  in 
the  work  of  Bible  distribution,  religious  journal- 
ism, home  missions,  foreign  missions  and,  minis- 
terial education. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  113 


(georse  Sbbision  paxter 

Dr.  Rice  was  succeeded  in  1831  by  "Revi'  George 
A.  Baxter,  D.  D.,  then  president  of  Washington 
College  at  Lexington.  His  students  there  called 
him  affectionately  "Old  Rex"  and  in  all  the  ex- 
tant references  to  him  we  find  this  tone  of  affec- 
tion. One  of  his  students  speaks  of  his  ponderous 
frame,  his  massive  head,  his  dignity,  his  rich,  tender 
voice,  the  majestic  march  of  his  pulpit  discourse, 
his'  swelling  emotions,  his  unconscious  tears — the 
embodiment  of  all  that  was  great  and  good  and 
loving.  Dr.  Moses  Hoge  has  told  us  that  the 
portrait  of  Dr.  Baxter  in  the  reading  room  of  our 
library  does  not  give  a  correct  idea  of  his  face  or 
form,  that  it  fails  to  represent  the  real  majesty 
of  his  presence,  and  further  that  the  fragments 
of  his  writings  which  have  been  preserved  do  not 
give  any  adequate  idea  of  his  intellectual  powder, 
adding  that  he  has  heard  many  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished divines  in  our  own  and  in  foreign  lands 
and  has  heard  few  who  surpassed  Dr.  Baxter  in 
argumentative  force,  in  pathos  or  in  pulpit  effec- 
tiveness. Dr.  John  Leyburn,  of  Baltimore,  also 
one  of  his  pupils,  says  his  chief  delight  was  in 
preaching  the  gospel  and  that  when  he  began  to 
preach  at  Hampden-Sidney,  the  people  asked  him 
to  give  them  longer  sermons,  a  rather  unusual 
request  in  those  days  or  in  these  and  one  which 
speaks  well  for  the  intellectual  stature  of  the 
Hampden-Sidney  people,   for  Dr.   Stuart  Robin- 


114  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

son,  another  of  his  pupils,  says  that  as  a  preacher 
Dr.  Baxter  "had  too  Httle  ornament  and  too 
much  thought  to  be  very  attractive  to  the  mass  of 
hearers,  if  they  were  strangers.  For,  though  he 
wielded  the  club  of  Hercules,  it  had  not  a  single 
wreath  to  adorn  it.  It  often  required  a  culti- 
vated as  well  as  an  attentive  mind  to  follow 
the  rapid  flow  of  his  thoughts;  but  to  such  minds 
his  sermons  were  both  an  intellectual  and  spiritual 
feast."  One  of  his  most  remarkable  sermons, 
preached  in  the  open  air  at  the  foot  of  the  moun- 
tains near  Goshen  Pass,  in  which  he  referred  to 
the  cry  of  the  impenitent  at  the  last  day  for  the 
mountains  and  rocks  to  fall  on  them,  caused  his 
hearers  to  rise  from  their  seats  and  turn  and  see 
if  the  mountain  was  not  really  about  to  fall. 
But,  great  as  he  was  in  the  pulpit,  his  power  of 
lucid  reasoning  shone  resplendent  in  the  class- 
room. Dr.  John  Leyburn  says  that  "All  the 
great  topics  he  was  called  upon  to  handle  had  been 
themes  of  reflection  during  almost  all  his  life. 
They  were  imbedded,  too,  in  his  heart  as  well 
as  in  his  understanding.  In  the  discussions  of  the 
lecture-room,  even  when  others  might  have  been 
taken  up  with  the  more  intellectual  aspects  of  the 
subject,  his  tear-filled  eyes  would  give  evidence 
that  the  truths  he  was  examining  had  penetrated 
further  than  the  regions  of  the  understanding. 
He  was  sometimes,  however,  full  of  humor.  This 
was  particularly  manifested  when  he  could  get 
a  student  into  a  logical  dilemma.  In  order  to 
do  this,  he  would  begin  with  questions  remote 
from  his  ultimate  purpose,  and  having  elicited 
from    the    unsuspecting    pupil    one    answer    after 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  115 

another,  would  finally  bring  him,  very  much  to 
his  surprise,  right  up  into  a  corner.  This  feat  was 
always  accompanied  by  our  venerable  professor's 
shaking  his  great  sides  with  good-natured  laugh- 
ter." One  of  the  most  talented  of  his  pupils. 
Dr.  John  H.  Bocock,  makes  the  remarkable  state- 
ment that  Baxter's  mind  was  "as  mighty  a  mind 
as  I  can  well  conceive  of  in  the  possession  of  a 
mere  mortal."  ,. 


116  APPRECIATIONS  AND 


Samuel  p.  Wiil^on 

Dr.  Baxter  died  in  1841  and  was  succeeded  by 
Dr.  Samuel  B.  Wilson,  whose  grandson  is  the 
editor  of  the  Presbyterian  of  the  South  and  whose 
great-grandchildren  are  members  of  the  Ginter 
Park  Church.  His  dignified,  courtly,  modest  de- 
meanor, his  long,  silvery  hair,  his  finely  chiseled 
features,  ample  brow,  kindly  eyes  and  cheery 
smile,  as  described  by  one  of  his  former  pupils. 
Rev.  J.  M.  Wharey,  D,  D.,  are  still  well  remem- 
bered by  some  here  present  to-day.  One  who  knew 
him  well  says  that  to  spiritually  minded,  intelli- 
gent, thoughtful  Christians,  the  simplicity  of 
manner  and  expression,  the  strong  good  sense,  the 
practical  piety,  humble  submission  to  God's  au- 
thority, and  fervent  love  and  gratitude  to  his 
Lord  and  Saviour  pervading  all  his  sermons,  gave 
great  satisfaction  and  made  his  preaching  emi- 
nently instructive.  Perhaps  I  can  give  you  the 
truest  impression  of  this  singularly  lovely  and 
useful  servant  of  God,  who  was  for  twenty-eight 
years  a  professor  here,  by  citing  two  incidents. 
He  was  a  modest  and  diffident  man  and  shrank 
from  putting  himself  forward.  He  was  also 
scrupulously  truthful  and  shy  of  making  a  state- 
ment that  might  seem  exaggerated.  When  a 
young  man  he  was  quite  strong  and  used  to  say 
that  the  first  time  he  visited  the  Natural  Bridge 
he  threw  a  stone  from  below  and  struck  the  arch. 
Later  in  life  he  ceased  to  relate  the  incident,  and, 


*  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  117 

when  a  friend  asked  him  about  it,  he  said  that  he 
had  thought  he  did,  but,  finding  the  feat  consider- 
ed so  difficult,  he  had  ceased  to  say  so. 

The  other  incident  speaks  volumes.  A  gentle- 
man applied  for  admission  into  the  Church  who 
had  been  previously  careless  and  negligent  of  his 
religious  duties.  When  asked  what  had  caused 
the  change  in  his  religious  views,  he  replied,  "The 
life  and  character  of  my  neighbor,  Dr.  Wilson." 


118  APPRECIATIONS  AND 


jFrancJs;  ^.  ^ampsion 

It  is  understood,  of  course,  that  up  to  this  point 
in  this  discourse  concerning  the  successive  pro- 
fessors in  the  Seminary,  I  have  confined  my  re- 
marks to  the  four  successive  occupants  of  the 
Chair  of  Systematic  Theology  and  have  said 
nothing  about  the  professors  in  the  other  depart- 
ments who  were  associated  with  them.  The  time 
does  not  permit  us  to  mention  all,  and  I  am  se- 
lecting representative  men  of  the  several  periods. 

The  next  is  Francis  S.  Sampson,  Master  of 
Arts  of  the  University  of  Virginia,  student  of 
Oriental  Literature  in  the  Universities  of  Halle 
and  Berlin,  and  professor  of  that  department  in 
this  Seminary  for  sixteen  years,  beginning  in 
1838,  a  blond,  slender,  agile  man,  scrupulously 
neat,  tasteful  and  simple  in  dress,  solid  and 
symmetrical  in  mind,  methodical  and  thorough 
in  his  habits  of  study,  so  much  so  that  the  most 
gifted  of  his  pupils  and  colleagues  has  stated  that 
the  results  of  his  studies  remained  more  per- 
manently and  fully  his  own  than  those  of  any  man 
he  has  ever  known.  He  speaks  with  equal  en- 
thusiasm of  Dr.  Sampson's  fervent  piety,  holy 
example,  and  unrivalled  power  as  a  teacher.  In 
the  class-room,  he  was  so  animated  and  ardent 
that  the  most  sluggish  student  could  not  resist 
the  impulse.  He  constructed  his  own  system  of 
Hebrew  etymology,  but  unfortunately  it  was  not 
published.     Nor  did  he  publish  any  volume  during 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  119 

his  lifetime,  which  ended  in  1854,  when  he  was 
only  thirty-nine  years  of  age;  but  there  is  a  well- 
known  and  valuable  posthumous  volume  from  his 
pen,  "Sampson  on  Hebrews."  Dr.  Dabney,  his 
ablest  pupil,  in  the  last  article  that  he  ever  issued, 
dictated  indeed  on  the  very  morning  of  his  death, 
says,  "Having  sat  under  the  teaching  of  several  of 
the  most  learned  and  able  professors  who  ever 
appeared  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  I  am  com- 
pelled by  the  truth  to  declare  that  Dr.  Sampson's 
instructions  were  more  valuable  to  me  than  those 
of  any  other  living  man." 


120  APPRECIATIONS  AND 


benjamin  iW.  ^rnitj) 

Of  Dr.  B.  M.  Smith  who  succeeded  Dr.  Sampson 
in  1854  and  was  for  thirty-five  years  an  active 
professor  in  the  Seminary,  my  own  teacher  and  my 
venerated  predecessor  in  the  Chair  of  Old  Testa- 
ment Exegesis,  time  would  fail  me  to  speak  as 
my  heart  would  prompt.  When  I  came  to  the 
Seminary  as  his  assistant  professor  in  1883,  I 
boarded  for  several  years  at  his  table,  I  knew  and 
loved  the  members  of  his  family,  and  the  memories 
of  that  sweet  and  happy  Christian  home  will 
abide  with  me  and  bless  me  throughout  life.  Dr. 
Smith  was  a  versatile  man.  Before  coming  to  the 
Seminary,  he  had  been  a  student  of  Semitic  lan- 
guages in  Europe,  then  pastor  at  Danville,  Tinkling 
Spring,  Waynesboro  and  Staunton,  and  had  been 
Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Publication  in  Phila- 
delphia. In  addition  to  his  work  as  professor  for 
nearly  two  score  years,  he  did  a  great  deal  of 
writing,  contributing  elaborate  articles  to  the 
reviews,  issuing  in  separate  form  various  addresses 
and  sermons,  and  publishing  several  books,  such 
as  his  prize  essay  on  "Family  Religion,"  his 
"Introduction  to  the  Poetical  Books  of  the  Bible," 
which  was  published  both  in  Europe  and  America, 
and  his  Commentary  on  Proverbs  which  is  still 
current  as  a  part  of  Jamieson,  Fausset  and  Brown's 
Bible  Commentary.  One  of  the  most  laborious 
tasks  he  performed  and  one  of  the  most  useful 
for  the  history  of  our  branch  of  the  Church  was 


BENJAMIN  M.  SMITH. 


<•  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  121 

the  compilation  of  the  General  Catalogue  of  the 
Seminary,  published  in  1884,  and  containing  brief 
sketches  of  all  the  students  who  had  matriculated 
in  the  sixty  years  since  the  reorganization  of  the 
institution  by  Dr.  Rice.  The  General  Catalogue 
published  in  1907  is  based  on  Dr.  Smith's  and  is 
more  indebted  to  it  perhaps  than  to  all  other 
sources. 

Dr.  Dabney,  in  talking  with  me  once  about 
Dr.  Smith,  said  that  the  chief  characteristic  of 
his  mind  was  its  alertness.  There  may  have  been 
more  learned  men.  There  may  have  been  more 
profound  men.  But  there  were  few  quicker  men 
than  he  in  his  mental  processes.  He  was  probably 
the  most  adroit  debater  ever  seen  in  our  church 
courts.  He  knew  how  to  think  on  his  feet  and  was 
never  at  a  loss  for  an  idea  or  a  word.  All  his 
public  speaking  was  marked  by  a  readiness,  an 
ease,  and  a  copious  fluency  that  I  have  never  seen 
surpassed.  He  was  master  of  that  elaborate 
extemporaneous  style,  best  known  to  our  genera- 
tion perhaps  from  the  speeches  of  Mr.  Gladstone, 
which  was  so  perfect  that  one  who  did  not  know 
him,  listening  to  the  rolling  and  sonorous  periods, 
inevitably  received  the  impression  that  every 
word  had  been  carefully  written  out  beforehand 
and  committed  to  memory.  On  fifteen  minutes' 
notice,  he  could  stand  up  and  body  forth  for  an 
hour,  without  hitch  or  hesitation,  elevated 
thoughts  on  important  subjects,  in  language  of 
the  utmost  propriety  and  dignity,  in  long  and 
complete  sentences,  with  almost  innumerable 
ramifications,  each  worked  out  to  perfection;  and, 
after   holding   such    a   sentence    in    the    suspense 


122  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

of  construction  for,  perhaps,  five  minutes  at  a 
time,  making  matter  sufficient  to  occupy  a  printed 
page,  would  bring  the  entire  compHcated  structure 
to  a  triumphant  finish.  An  accompHshed  Htera- 
teur  of  his  day  said  that  Dr.  Smith's  off-hand 
oratory  reminded  him  of  a  mighty  river,  flowing 
with  broad  expanse,  without  chafing  or  unseemly 
impetuosity,  deliberate,  smooth,  majestic.  His 
public  prayers  and  his  reading  of  hymns  were 
hardly  less  notable.  When  opening  the  General 
Assembly  as  the  retiring  moderator  at  New 
Orleans  in  1877,  he  produced  a  profound  im- 
pression by  his  reading  with  faultless  emphasis  and 
deep  feeling  Newton's  hymn,  "In  evil  long  I  took 
delight." 

His  greatest  service  to  the  Seminary  was  ren- 
dered just  after  the  war  when  the  institution, 
paralyzed  by  that  great  cataclysm,  had  for  awhile 
not  a  cent  of  income  and  seemed  doomed  to  ruin. 
By  his  personal  exertions  as  Financial  Agent, 
aided  by  the  influence  of  his  great  colleagues, 
Dabney  and  Peck,  he  collected  for  the  support  of 
the  Seminary  about  $90,000  in  the  ten  years  from 
1866  to  1876. 


ROBERT  L.   DABNEY. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  123 


a^obert  %.  Babnep 


Gigantic  intellect,  volcanic  emotions,  vast  learn- 
ing, whole-hearted  consecration — Coryphaeus  of 
American  theologians,  marvelous  teacher,  most 
illustrious  of  all  the  great  men  who  have  served 
this  Seminary — what  can  one  say  of  him  in  a 
paper  like  this?  There  are  many  of  us  here  present 
this  morning  who  sat  at  his  feet  and  who  remember 
him  vividly.  Stalwart  and  ungainly  in  person,  of 
dark  complexion,  with  firm  face  and  strong  black 
eyes,  of  hot,  eager,  resolute  temper,  a  good  hater, 
an  ardent  lover,  austere  in  manner  but  tender  of 
heart,  terrible  in  sarcasm  and  invective,  but 
loving  and  sympathetic  to  all  in  distress — I  once 
heard  him  preach  at  the  funeral  of  a  dear  young 
friend  with  the  tears  literally  streaming  down  his 
face.  Grim  fighter  as  he  was  against  all  false- 
hood and  wickedness,  in  his  social  relations  he 
was  benignant  and  genial.  In  his  lectures,  his 
argument  moved  with  the  strength  of  a  tornado 
but  with  the  precision  of  an  engine.  Fused  with 
passion  the  great  doctrines  of  our  faith  poured 
from  his  mind  like  red  hot  iron  from  a  furnace. 
Yet,  when  he  questioned  the  members  of  the  class 
never  was  a  man  more  patient,  more  gentle,  more 
considerate  with  a  timid  or  dull  student  than  this 
intellectual  Titan  who  a  moment  before  perhaps 
had  been  laying  about  him  with  the  hammer  of 
Thor. 

It  has  been   said   that   a  small   island   can   be 


124  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

explored  in  a  few  hours,  but  not  a  wide  continent. 
The  one  may  be  characterized  in  a  word,  but  not 
the  other.  So  the  gifts  of  some  men  are  insular 
and  may  be  summed  up  in  a  few  words,  but  the 
gifts  of  this  man  were  continental.  It  would 
be  impossible  in  the  time  at  our  command  to  give 
any  adequate  picture  of  him.  And  it  is  the  less 
necessary  to  attempt  it  because  his  portrait  has 
been  painted  at  full  length  by  my  colleague.  Dr. 
Johnson,  in  a  biography  of  characteristic  thor- 
oughness and  strength  which  is  accessible  to  you 
all  and  which  I  would  exhort  you  all  to  read.  It 
would  be  a  reproach  particularly  to  any  student 
in  this  Seminary  not  to  be  familiar  with  that  ad- 
mirable book.  Not  only  so,  but  ignorance  of  it 
would  involve  to  you  a  great  loss  which  no  minister 
in  the  Presbyterian  Church  should  be  willing  to 
suffer. 

"I  dwell  among  mine  own  people,"  said  the 
great  woman  of  Shunem  to  Elisha.  How  loyal 
Dr.  Dabney  was  to  his  own  people  and  to  this 
Seminary,  and  how  little  he  was  moved  by  con- 
siderations of  ambition  or  gain  is  well  illustrated 
in  his  prompt  and  positive  refusal  of  the  posi- 
tions offered  him  and  urged  upon  him  in  Prince- 
ton Seminary,  at  the  Fifth  Avenue  Church,  New 
York,  and  elsewhere. 

Dr.  Dabney  was  a  many-sided  man — student, 
teacher,  farmer,  mechanic,  financier,  political 
economist,  patriot,  army  chaplain,  soldier.  Chief 
of  Staff  to  Stonewall  Jackson,  philosopher,  theo- 
logian, author.  Seminary  professor  pre-eminent, 
and  mighty  preacher  of  the  gospel. 


THOMAS   K.   FRCK. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  125 


In  view  of  the  prodigious  force  and  conceded 
pre-eminence  of  Dr.  Dabney,  you  may  feel  that 
no  man  can  now  be  mentioned  who  will  not  seem 
dwarfed  by  comparison  with  such  a  colossus. 
But  there  remains  one  man  whose  connection  with 
the  Seminary  began  in  the  first  fifty  years  and 
who  though  not  so  versatile  or  so  great  in  creative 
force,  nevertheless  bears  well  the  comparison 
with  him  as  a  teacher.  That  man  was  Dr.  Thomas 
E.  Peck  who  in  1860  resigned  the  pastorate  of  the 
Central  Church,  Baltimore,  to  become  Professor 
of  Church  History,  and  who  for  more  than  thirty 
years  continued  to  teach  successive  classes  with 
a  wealth  of  learning,  a  saintliness  of  influence, 
and  a  perspicuity  and  power  of  statement  which 
have  rarely  been  equalled. 

One  of  his  outstanding  characteristics  was 
poise.  "His  mind  was  not  so  massive  as  Dr. 
Dabney's,  nor  so  brilliant  as  Dr.  Thornwell's, 
but  was  perhaps  in  the  equilibrium  of  its  faculties 
superior  to  either." 

Another  notable  feature  of  his  teaching  was 
its  seminal  quality.  A  seminary  is  etymologically 
a  seedery,  a  place  where  seed  is  sown.  The 
thoughts  that  Dr.  Peck  gave  his  pupils  had  this 
germinant  quality. 

He  was  a  master  of  condensation  and  concise- 
ness of  statement.  His  extemporaneous  utter- 
ances on  any  subject  to  which  he  had  given  con- 


126  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

sideratlon  could  be  printed  without  revision.  He 
was  a  man  of  golden  thought  and  crystal  word, 
exact,  reliable,  absolutely  exempt  from  any  dis- 
position to  strain  after  novelties,  solid,  straight- 
forward, candid,  convincing. 

As  a  preacher  he  was  more  weighty  than  popu- 
lar. He  told  us  once  that  when  he  was  just  enter- 
ing the  ministry  he  visited  a  certain  church  with 
a  view  to  a  call.  He  did  the  best  he  could,  but 
on  his  return  home  he  received  a  letter  from  the 
session  informing  him  politely  but  plainly  that 
they  had  no  further  use  for  his  services  and  telling 
him  that  the  trouble  was  there  -was  too  much  ball 
for  the  powder.  By  the  way,  he  was  fond  of  fun. 
His  ordinary  manner  in  social  life  was  quiet, 
gentle,  even  grave,  deepening  at  times  almost  to 
melancholy,  yet  rent  and  shattered  at  intervals 
by  veritable  earthquakes  of  laughter. 

With  all  his  ability  and  all  his  learning  he 
was  a  singularly  modest  man,  and  possessed  that 
rarest  and  most  distinctive  of  the  Christian 
graces — genuine  humility.  The  hundreds  of  young 
men  who  sat  at  his  feet  felt  the  power  of  his  child- 
like faith  and  his  Christ-like  character,  and  were 
the  stronger  to  proclaim  what  they  learned  from 
his  lips  because  of  the  influence  of  that  which 
they  had  learned  from  his  life.  When  God  called 
him  home  it  fell  to  my  lot  to  make  the  address 
at  his  funeral  and  what  I  said  then  I  say  now, 
that  while  his  views  of  God's  spotless  holiness  and 
of  his  own  deep  sinfulness  were  such  that  he 
could  only  think  of  himself  as  the  chief  of  sinners 
(and  he  actually  called  himself  that  in  his  last 
will  and  testament),  yet  he  came  as  near  to  being 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  127 

a  holy  mail  in  his  character  and  Hfe  as  any  other 
man  I  have  ever  known. 

Hoge,  Rice,  Baxter,  Wilson,  Sampson,  Smith, 
Dabney,  Peck — these  and  others  hke  these  of 
whom  time  does  not  now  permit  us  to  speak  are 
the  men  who  under  God  stamped  upon  this  Semi- 
nary in  its  first  fifty  years  the  characteristics 
which  have  made  it  such  a  boundless  blessing  to 
the  world,  its  thorough  and  solid  scholarship,  its 
Pauline  ideal  of  ministerial  character  and  attain- 
ments, its  staunch  adherence  to  the  great  doc- 
trines of  the  Reformed  Faith,  its  practical  effi- 
ciency, its  high  average  of  pulpit  talent  and 
preaching  power,  its  humble  dependence  upon 
God,  its  intelligent  and  steady  zeal  for  missions — 
for  it  must  be  remembered  that  its  society  of  mis- 
sionary inquiry  was  organized  as  early  as  1818, 
that  this  one  Seminary  has  trained  a  full  half 
of  all  the  ordained  missionaries  that  our  branch 
of  the  Church  has  sent  to  foreign  lands,  and  that  in 
proportion  to  the  number  of  its  students  it  out- 
ranks every  other  seminary  in  America  in  the  quan- 
tity of  mission  work  done  in  its  vicinity  and  in  its 
per  capita  contributions  to  missions. 

Surely  we  may  thank  God  from  our  hearts 
to-day  for  the  gift  to  this  institution  of  the  great 
and  good  men  who  in  the  first  half  centur}^  of  its 
existence  wrought  into  its  very  fibre  the  principles 
and  ideals  which  have  given  it  its  distinguished 
place  and  its  large  efficiency  among  the  Christian 
forces  of  the  world. 

They  began  in  a  small  way.  Jacob  said  to  God 
at  Peniel:  "With  my  staff  I  passed  over  this 
Jordan;    and    now    I    am    become    two    bands." 


128  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

Moses  Hoge  started  with  two  or  three  students. 
To-day  the  enrollment  is  one  hundred  and  seven. 
But  this  could  not  have  been  without  the  labors 
of  the  fathers  from  Hoge  and  Rice  to  Dabney 
and  Peck.  Let  us  then  thank  God  for  these  master 
builders  and  let  us  remember  that  our  heritage 
"is  a  summons  as  well  as  a  legacy,"  and  that  we 
can  best  honor  their  memory  by  emulating  their 
virtues — and  so  may  God  continue  to  make  the 
institution  to  which  they  gave  their  toils  and 
tears  and  prayers  a  fountain  of  blessing  to  the 
Church  and  the  world. 

Glory  be  to  the  Father,  and  to  the  Son,  and 
to  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  it  was  in  the  beginning,  is 
now  and  ever  shall  be,  world  without  end.      Amen. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  129 


®f)e  peginninssi  anb  ©ebelopmcnt  of  tfje 

^resbpterian  Ci)mcfj  in  i9ortt) 

Carolina 

Address  at  the  Centennial  Celebration  of  the  Synod 
of  North  Carolina,  in  Alania?ice  Church,  October 
17,  1913. 

PONS  ET  ORIGO. 

The  Presbyterian  Church  in  North  Carolina  is 
mainly  the  result  of  two  streams  of  immigration 
from  Northwestern  Europe — one  from  the  North 
of  Scotland  and  the  other  from  the  North  of  Ire- 
land. Both  streams  were  set  in  motion  by  the 
oppressions  of  the  British  government.  Both  the 
Scotch  and  the  Scotch-Irish  came  to  the  New 
World  seeking  the  civil  and  religious  liberty  which 
was  denied  them  in  the  Old.  The  Scotch  entered 
by  the  port  of  Wilmington  and  occupied  the  Cape 
Fear  country  in  and  around  what  is  now  Cumber- 
land county,  and  the  Scotch-Irish  entered  mainly 
by  the  ports  of  Philadelphia  and  Charleston  and 
occupied  chiefly  the  Piedmont  region  farther  west. 

EARLIEST  PRESBYTERIAN  SETTLEMENTS. 

To  this  day  these  two  parts  of  the  State  are  the 
chief  centers  of  our  Presbyterian  strength.  Yet 
it  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  earliest  of  the 
Scotch-Irish  settlements  was  not  on  the  Yadkin 
or  the  Catawba,  but  in  Duplin  county,  where  a 


130  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

colony  of  Presbyterians  from  Ulster  settled  about 
1736.  Their  principal  place  of  worship  was  called 
Goshen  Grove,  and  was  about  three  miles  from 
what  is  now  Kenansville,  and  to  this  venerable 
congregation  the  present  Grove  church  at  Kenans- 
ville traces  its  origin.  Farther  down  towards  Wil- 
mington, in  what  was  called  The  Welsh  Tract,  in 
New  Hanover  county,  was  another  early  settle- 
ment, at  first  composed  of  Welsh  emigrants,  but 
shortly  afterwards  reinforced  by  other  families. 
In  the  northern  part  of  the  State  also  (known 
later  as  Granville,  Orange  and  Caswell  counties) 
Scotch-Irish  settlements  began  about  1738. 

THE  FIRST  MISSIONARY,  WILLIAM  ROBINSON. 
1742-1743. 

The  religious  needs  of  all  these  scattered  Pres- 
byterian settlements  in  North  Carolina  were  met 
in  a  measure  for  a  number  of  years  by  missionaries 
sent  from  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey,  where 
there  was  already  a  large  and  rapidly  growing 
Scotch-Irish  population.  The  first  of  these  mis- 
sionaries, and  the  first  Presbyterian  minister  that 
ever  preached  in  North  Carolina,  seems  to  have 
been  William  Robinson,  who  spent  a  part  of  the 
winter  of  1742  and  1743  among  Presbyterians  set- 
tlements in  this  colony.  His  work  as  a  missionary 
in  Virginia  had  been  remarkably  successful,  but 
the  results  of  his  labor  in  Carolina  were  very  small. 
We  do  not  even  know  what  the  places  were  that 
he  visited  in  his  tour,  but  as  the  Presbyterian  set- 
tlements in  Duplin  and  New  Hanover  were  the 
oldest  in  the  State,  it  is  probable  that  these  were 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  131 

among  the  places  that  he  visited,  as  well  as  the 
settlements  in  Orange  and  Granville. 

HUGH  M'ADEN'S  MISSIONARY  JOURNEY. 
1755-1756. 

No  such  uncertainty  attaches  to  the  movements 
of  the  next  missionary  who  is  known  to  have 
preached  in  these  parts,  Hugh  McAden,  for  in  a 
full  and  interesting  journal — which  has  happily 
been  preserved  almost  entire,  and  which  is  the 
most  valuable  document  that  has  come  down  to  us 
from  those  early  days — he  describes  in  detail  the 
extended  missionary  journey  through  Virginia  and 
the  Carolinas  on  which  he  was  sent  as  a  young 
licentiate  by  Newcastle  Presbytery  in  1755  and 
1756,  a  journey  which  occupied  a  whole  year. 
Traveling  horseback  and  preaching  as  he  went,  he 
passed  through  the  Valley  of  Virginia  from  the 
Potomac  almost  to  the  Peaks  of  Otter,  hearing  as 
he  came  with  sorrow  and  dismay  the  news  of  Brad- 
dock's  defeat,  crossed  the  Blue  Ridge,  then  the 
Dan  River,  and  entered  North  Carolina  July  29, 
1755.  Without  undertaking  to  enumerate  all  the 
places  at  which  he  preached  in  homes  or  meeting 
houses  after  entering  the  State,  let  us  mention  a 
few  in  order  to  get  a  general  idea  of  his  route: 
Hico,  Eno,  Grassy  Creek,  Fishing  Creek,  Haw- 
fields,  Buffalo,  Yadkin  Ford,  Rocky  River,  Sugar 
Creek  (October  19th),  the  Broad  River  country 
in  upper  South  Carolina,  the  Waxhaws;  then  back 
into  North  Carolina,  revisiting  some  of  the  places 
touched  on  his  southward  journey  and  including 
Coddle  Creek  Thyatira  and  Second  Creek;  then 
east  to  the  Highlanders  on  the  Cape  Fear,  preach- 


132  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

ing  at  Hector  McNeill's  (The  Bluff),  Alexander 
McKay's  (where  Longstreet  church  now  stands), 
Bladen  Courthouse,  and  other  points;  then  to 
Wilmington,  where  on  February  15,  1756,  he 
preached  in  the  morning  "to  a  large  and  splendid 
audience,"  but  in  the  afternoon  to  only  "about  a 
dozen,"  a  slump  which  greatly  surprised  and  de- 
pressed him.  The  next  two  Sundays  he  preached 
at  Mr.  Evans's,  in  The  Welsh  Tract,  and  the  peo- 
ple there  took  some  steps  towards  raising  a  salary 
and  calling  him  as  pastor.  In  March  we  find  him 
at  the  house  of  Mr.  Dickson,  the  clerk  of  Duplin 
county,  where  he  preached  to  a  considerable  con- 
gregation, most  of  whom  were  "Irish,"  as  he  calls 
them,  meaning,  of  course,  "Scotch-Irish."  It  must 
always  be  remembered  that  by  this  name  is  meant 
not  a  mixture  of  Scotch  and  Irish,  but  Scotch  peo- 
ple of  pure  strain  who  had  lived  for  a  few  genera- 
tions in  the  North  of  Ireland.  McAden  pursued 
his  journey  northward  as  far  as  Edgecombe;  then 
westward,  coming  again  in  April  to  the  Granville 
county  region,  which  he  had  traversed  the  preced- 
ing summer;  and  passed  out  of  the  State  on  his 
homeward  journey  on  May  6,  1756.  On  his  re- 
turn to  Pennsylvania  he  seems  to  have  visited 
James  Campbell,  a  Scotch  minister  who  was  then 
preaching  in  Lancaster  county,  in  that  State,  and 
turned  his  attention  to  the  condition  of  his  coun- 
trymen on  the  Cape  Fear,  with  the  result  that  in 
the  following  year  (1757)  Mr.  Campbell  moved 
thither  and  became  their  minister. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  133 

FROM  CULLODEN  TO  THE  CAPE  FEAR. 

The  Scotch  settlements  on  the  Upper  Cape 
Fear  antedated  those  of  the  Scotch-Irish  on  the 
Yadkin  and  the  Catawba.  Some  Scotch  famihes 
are  known, to  have  been  there  as  far  back  as  1729, 
when  the  province  was  divided  into  North  and 
South  CaroHna;  and  when  Alexander  Clark  ar- 
rived with  his  shipload  of  emigrants  in  1736  he 
found  "a  good  many"  Scotch  already  settled  in 
Cumberland.  But  the  great  influx  of  the  High- 
landers began  ten  years  later,  after  the  disastrous 
Battle  of  Culloden,  where  their  unworthy  and  ill- 
starred  leader,  Charles  Edward,  the  Young  Pre- 
tender, was  utterly  routed,  and  after  five  months 
of  wanderings  and  hardships,  aided  by  the  heroic 
Flora  McDonald  and  others,  escaped  to  France. 
His  misguided  but  devoted  followers  were  hunted 
down  and  slain  in  large  numbers,  their  houses 
burned,  their  cattle  carried  away,  their  property 
destroyed,  and  their  country  ravaged  with  a  ruth- 
less hand.  Many  were  carried  captive  to  England 
and  scores  of  them  publicly  executed  there  as 
rebels.  Finally,  however,  George  H,  with  tardy 
clemency,  pardoned  a  great  number  of  them  on 
condition  of  their  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance. 
But  even  then  they  were  subjected  to  much  petty 
oppression  and  many  indignities,  being  forbidden 
to  own  any  weapons  or  to  wear  their  ancient  na- 
tional dress,  and  being  surrounded  by  armed  men 
and  spies  of  the  government.  These  were  the 
conditions  that  gave  rise  to  the  large  settlements 
of  the  Scotch  on  the  Cape  Fear.  Hundreds  of  the 
Highlanders  sailed  for  the  New  World.  In  1749, 
a  company  of  about   three   hundred,    under  the 


134  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

leadership  of  Neill  McNeill,  landed  at  Wilmington 
and  settled  in  the  region  of  which  the  community 
then  known  as  Crosscreek,  afterwards  as  Campbel- 
ton,  and  now  as  Fayetteville,  was  the  center. 
These  were  followed  by  other  large  companies  of 
their  countrymen  who  wished  to  escape  persecu- 
tion and  improve  their  general  condition,  and  so 
in  time  they  spread  through  all  the  territory  now 
comprised  in  the  counties  of  Cumberland,  Bladen, 
Sampson,  Moore,  Harnett,  Montgomery,  Robeson, 
Hoke,  Scotland,  Richmond  and  Anson. 

THE  FIRST  SETTLED  PASTOR,  JAMES  CAMPBELL. 

1757-1780. 

These  immigrants  of  1749  brought  no  minister 
with  them,  and,  as  there  was  here  no  established 
Presbyterian  Church,  dividing  the  country  into 
parishes  by  civil  authority,  and  no  collection  of 
ministers'  salaries  by  law,  as  in  the  old  country, 
and  as  the  immigrants  could  not  immediately  in- 
vent and  introduce  a  new  method,  they  seem  to 
have  had  no  regular  public  services  till  the  arrival 
of  James  Campbell  in  1757,  after  his  interview 
with  McAden.  We  have  already  seen  that,  in  the 
preceding  year  (1756),  McAden  had  visited  these 
settlements  and  preached  at  various  places  to  the 
Highlanders,  some  of  whom — knowing  only 
Gaelic — understood  but  little  of  what  he  said,  and 
that  it  was  mainly  McAden's  reports  of  their 
spiritual  destitution  that  influenced  Campbell  to 
come.  He  settled  on  the  Cape  Fear,  a  few  miles 
above  Fayetteville,  and  began  to  preach  princi- 
pally at  three  points.  In  1758  he  was  given  a 
formal  call  signed  by  twelve  representative  men 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  135 

in  the  community,  in  which  it  was  stipulated  that 
he  should  receive  a  salary  of  one  hundred  pounds 
per  annum.  In  a  short  time  three  churches  were 
organized,  since  known  as  Bluff,  Barbecue  and 
Longstreet. 

It  was  Mr.  Campbell's  custom  to  preach  two 
sermons  each  Sabbath,  one  in  Gaelic  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  Highlanders  and  the  other  in  English 
for  the  benefit  of  the  less  numerous  families  of 
Lowland  Scotch,  Scotch- Irish  and  Dutch,  who 
were  mingled  with  them.  In  a  few  congregations 
of  Fayetteville  Presbytery  this  custom  of  bi-lingual 
preaching  was  kept  up  for  about  a  hundred  years. 
That  Mr.  Campbell's  people  were  well  trained  by 
his  "exegetical  and  practical"  preaching  in  the  two 
languages  and  by  his  thorough  catechetical  meth- 
ods; that  they  had  the  Scotch  genius  for  theologi- 
cal discussion  and  were  formidable  "sermon- 
tasters,"  is  clearly  shown  by  a  remark  of  Rev. 
John  McLeod,  who  was  for  a  few  years  Mr.  Camp- 
bell's assistant.  He  said  "he  would  rather  preach 
to  the  most  polished  and  fashionable  congregation 
in  Edinburgh  than  to  the  little  critical  carls  of 
Barbecue."  This  church  was  Flora  McDonald's 
place  of  worship  while  she  lived  at  Cameron's 
Hill.  For  nineteen  years  Mr.  Campbell  prose- 
cuted a  laborious  and  fruitful  ministry.  For  more 
than  a  year  of  this  period  he  also  served  the  people 
of  Purity  church,  South  Carolina,  making  the 
long  journey  across  the  country  at  regular  times  for 
that  purpose.  He  was  thus  the  first  minister  of 
what  is  now  the  flourishing  church  at  Chester. 
When  the  Revolutionary  War  broke  out  his  mettle 
was  still  further  tested,   for  in  spite  of  the  fact 


136  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

that  most  of  his  parishioners,  mindful  of  their 
former  sufferings  and  their  special  oath  of  alle- 
giance, supported  the  Crown,  he,  like  all  other 
Presbyterian  ministers  through  the  land,  promptly 
espoused  the  cause  of  the  Colonies.  This  led  to 
his  withdrawal  from  his  charge  for  four  years, 
during  which  he  preached  in  the  upper  part  of  the 
State,  but  in  the  last  year  of  his  life  he  returned 
to  his  home,  and  there  in  1780  he  died.  To  James 
Campbell,  then,  belongs  the  distinction  of  being 
the  first  ordained  minister  to  take  up  his  abode 
among  the  Presbyterian  settlements  of  North 
Carolina. 

And  yet  the  honor  may  well  be  shared  by  two 
of  his  contemporaries — one  in  the  west  and  the 
other  in  the  east,  for  in  1758,  the  same  year  in 
which  Campbell  received  his  formal  call  to  the 
Cape  Fear  congregation,  Alexander  Craighead  was 
installed  pastor  of  Rocky  River  church,  not  far 
from  the  present  town  of  Concord;  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing year,  1759,  Hugh  McAden  was  installed  as 
pastor  in  Duplin  and  New  Hanover.*  Campbell, 
Craighead  and  McAden — this  is  our  triumvirate 
of  pioneer  pastors.  These  three  we  honor  as  the 
fathers  of  our  Synod. 

M'ADEN   AND   OTHERS   IN   DUPLIN   AND   NEW   HANOVER. 

McAden  labored  for  about  nine  years  in  Duplin 
and  New  Hanover;  and  then  for  reasons  of  health, 
moved  to  Caswell  in  the  Dan  River  valley,  where 
he  spent  the  rest  of  his  life,  thirteen  years,  preach- 
ing to  the  people  of  that  county  and  the  neighbor- 

*It  is  thought  by  some  good  authorities  that  Mcx\den's  settlement 
preceded  that  of  Campbell.  I  follow  the  dates  given  in  Foote's  Sketches. 


,  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  137 

ing  county  of  Pittsylvania  in  Virginia.  He  died 
in  1781  at  his  home  near  Red  House  church. 

The  work  in  Duphn  and  New  Hanover  lan- 
guished after  McAden's  departure,  but  some  other 
beginnings  were  made  in  that  region  which  it 
behooves  us  to  notice  briefly  before  turning  our 
attention  to  the  planting  of  Presbyterianism  in 
the  upper  parts  of  the  State.  While  "Wilmington 
had  no  organized  church  till  long  after  the  Revo- 
lution," the  people  there  enjoyed  the  occasional 
services  of  certain  scholarly  men  who  acted  in 
the  double  capacity  of  school  teachers  and  minis- 
ters. The  first  of  these  was  Rev.  James  Tate, 
who  came  from  Ireland  to  Wilmington  about  1760 
and  "for  his  support  opened  a  classical  school, 
the  first  ever  taught  in  the  place.  He  educated 
many  of  the  young  men  of  New  Hanover  who  took 
an  active  part  in  the  Revolution."  He  was  a 
staunch  patriot,  and  for  a  while  during  the  war 
for  freedom  he  had  to  withdraw  from  Wilmington, 
making  his  home  at  Hawfields.  Though  declining 
all  offers  to  become  a  settled  pastor,  he  made 
frequent  journeys  through  New  Hanover  and  the 
adjoining  counties,  particularly  up  the  Black  and 
South  rivers,  preaching  to  the  people  and  bap- 
tizing their  children.  "He  received  a  small  fee 
for  each  baptism,  either  in  money  or  cotton  yarn; 
and  this  appears  to  have  been  all  his  salary  and 
all  the  remuneration  for  his  journeyings  and  ser- 
vices." 

About  the  year  1785  Rev.  William  Bingham, 
also  from  Ireland,  began  to  preach  in  Wilming- 
ton and  the  surrounding  country,  and  he,  too, 
supported  himself  by  teaching  a  classical  school. 


138  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

His  success  as  a  teacher  was  extraordinary,  not 
only  in  Wilmington  but  also  in  Chatham  and 
Orange  counties,  whither  he  moved  later.  He 
was  the  progenitor  of  a  famous  line  of  head- 
masters to  whom  Church  and  State  are  alike 
deeply  indebted. 

The  first  church  building  on  Black  River  was 
erected  about  1770.  Rockfish,  Keith  and  Hope- 
well were  organized  under  the  ministry  of  Rev. 
Robert  Tate,  who  came  to  New  Hanover  in  1799. 

ALEXANDER    CRAIGHEAD    AND    THE    SEVEN    CHURCHES 
OF  MECKLENBURG. 

So  much  for  Presbyterianism  in  the  East 
down  to  1800.  Now  we  turn  to  the  beginnings 
of  our  Church  in  the  West,  the  Piedmont  re- 
gion, stretching  from  the  Dan  to  the  Catawba. 
The  first  minister  to  settle  in  this  part  of  the 
State,  as  already  noted,  was  Alexander  Craig- 
head, a  man  of  ardent  temperament  and  strong 
convictions,  a  warm  admirer  of  the  spirit  and 
methods  of  Whitfield  in  religious  work,  a  fear- 
less champion  of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  and 
a  progressive  from  spur  to  plume.  Himself  a 
native  of  Ireland,  he  was  well  acquainted  with 
the  oppressions  to  which  his  people  had  been 
subjected  by  the  bigots  who  ruled  England; 
and,  when  he  came  to  America,  about  1736, 
he  came  burning  with  indignation  and  panting 
to  oppose  any  similar  tyranny  here.  He  was 
far  in  advance  even  of  his  Scotch- Irish  breth- 
ren in  his  views  on  this  subject.  A  pamphlet 
which  he  published  gave  great  offense  to  the 
Governor  of  Pennsylvania.       The  Governor  laid 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  139 

it  before  the  Synod  of  Philadelphia,  of  which 
Craighead  was  a  member,  and  the  Synod  ex- 
pressed its  disapproval  of  Craighead's  views. 
Other  differences  arose  between  him  and  his 
more  conservative  brethren,  and  in  1749  he 
moved  to  Augusta  county,  Va.,  and  made  his 
home  for  six  years  in  the  bounds  of  the  present 
Windy  Cove  congregation.  Braddock's  defeat 
in  1755  left  the  people  of  Craighead's  charge 
exposed  to  the  murderous  incursions  of  the  In- 
dians. Many  of  them,  therefore,  left  their 
homes,  crossed  the  Blue  Ridge,  turned  south- 
ward, and  settled  permanently  in  the  beautiful 
country  between  the  Yadkin  and  the  Catawba, 
niuch  of  which  was  then  covered  with  tall 
grass,  open  prairies  alternating  with  heavy 
cane-brakes  and  forests.  Craighead  came  with 
his  people;  and  thus  it  was  that  North  Caro- 
lina secured  her  great  apostle  of  independence. 
Already  other  settlers  of  the  same  sturdy  stock 
were  established  there,  and  there  McAden  had 
found  them  in  1755.  In  1758,  Craighead  was 
installed  pastor  at  Rocky  River,  which  then 
included  Sugar  Creek,  the  first  Presbyterian 
minister  to  settle  in  the  western  part  of  the 
State,  and  here  for  the  remaining  eight  years 
of  his  life,  among  a  homogeneous  and  highly 
intelligent  people,  thoroughly  agreed  in  their 
general  principles  of  religion  and  church  gov- 
ernment, far  removed  from  the  seat  of  civil  au- 
thority, he  preached  the  pure  gospel  and  poured 
forth  his  principles  of  civil  and  religious  liberty. 
The  seed  he  sowed  in  this  congenial  soil  yielded 
a  mighty  harvest,  for  though  he  died  in  1766,  yet 


140  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

it  was  his  voice  that  spoke  in  the  ringing  resolu- 
tions of  the  men  of  Mecklenburg  in  May,  1775. 

For  eight  years  Craighead  was  the  lone  star 
in  this  region,  "the  solitary  minister  between 
the  Yadkin  and  the  Catawba,"  the  one  settled 
pastor  in  "the  beautiful  Mesopotamia  of  Caro- 
lina," the  chief  teacher  of  the  people  in  religion, 
the  chief  molder  of  public  opinion  on  questions 
both  of  Church  and  State.  But  other  congrega- 
tions were  now  growing  up  around  the  mother 
Church,  and  in  1764  the  Rev.  Messrs.  Elihu 
Spencer  and  Alexander  McWhorter  were  sent  to 
North  Carolina  by  the  Synod  of  New  York  and 
Philadelphia  to  aid  these  congregations  in  ad- 
justing their  bounds  and  in  effecting  a  more  perfect 
organization.  In  1765  they  reported  to  the  Synod 
that  they  had  performed  this  mission.  Among 
the  churches  thus  organized  were  Steel  Creek, 
Providence,  Hopewell,  Center  and  Poplar  Tent; 
and  these,  with  Rocky  River  and  Sugar  Creek, 
constituted  the  historic  group  of  seven  congre- 
gations from  which  all  the  delegates  came  who 
ten  years  later  at  Charlotte  declared  their  inde- 
pendence of  the  British  Government. 

JAMES  HALL  AND  FOURTH  GREEK. 

In  the  same  year  (1764-'5),  and  on  the  same 
tour,  Messrs.  Spencer  and  McWhorter  organ- 
ized the  two  oldest  congregations  in  Rowan 
and  Iredell — namely,  Thyatira  and  Fourth  Creek, 
the  latter  now  represented  by  Statesville,  Bethany, 
Tabor  and  Concord  in  Iredell.  These  Fourth 
Creek  settlements  and  that  at  Cathey's  (now 
Thyatira)  had  begun  some  years  before,  perhaps 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  141 

not  far  from  1750,  and  had  been  supplied  with 
occasional  preaching  by  missionaries  from  the 
Synod  of  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  as  we  know 
from  synodical  records  dating  back  to  1753.  In 
1765  these  two  congregations  called  Rev.  Elihu 
Spencer,  but  failed  to  secure  him,  and  neither  of 
them  seems  to  have  had  a  settled  minister  till 
about  twelve  years  later,  shortly  after  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Revolutionary  War. 

The  first  regular  pastor  of  Fourth  Creek  was 
James  Hall,  who  had  grown  up  among  the  people 
of  this  congregation,  and  who  became  their  pastor 
in  1778.  Graduating  at  Nassau  Hall,  Princeton, 
with  the  degree  of  A.  B.  in  his  thirty-first  year 
(1774),  he  studied  theology  under  the  celebrated 
John  Witherspoon,  president  of  that  institution, 
from  whom  also  he  imbibed  his  well-known 
political  views,  and  declining  the  position  of  teacher 
of  mathematics  in  the  college,  he  returned  to  North 
Carolina  and  began  among  his  own  people  a 
beneficent  and  arduous  career  as  pastor,  mis- 
sionary, patriot,  soldier  and  educator.  He  fired 
the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  to  resist  British 
tyranny.  He  called  his  people  to  arms  in  de- 
fence of  their  liberties.  He  served  in  the  field 
in  the  twofold  capacity  of  cavalry  commander 
and  chaplain  of  the  regiment.  Tall,  sinewy, 
courageous,  cool,  exact,  resourceful  and  decided, 
of  fine  voice  and  commanding  presence,  he  was 
every  inch  a  soldier,  and  it  is  no  wonder  General 
Greene  offered  him  a  commission  as  brigadier 
general.  But  he  was  even  more  a  soldier  of  the 
cross  than  of  his  country,  and  while  ever  ready  to 
serve  in  an  emergency,  with  tongue  or  sword,  to 


142  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

rouse  his  countrymen  from  their  lethargy  or  lead 
them  against  the  foe,  he  never  lost  sight  of  the  fact 
that  his  supreme  work  was  to  preach  the  gospel, 
and,  believing  that  others  without  his  responsibili- 
ties and  opportunities  as  a  minister  could  ren- 
der the  military  service  needed  better  than  he 
could,  he  declined  the  proffered  honor  in  order 
to  devote  himself  more  fully  to  his  proper  work. 
He  made  many  missionary  journeys  and  was  the 
pioneer  Protestant  missionary  to  the  lower  valley 
of  the  Mississippi.  He  attended  the  General 
Assembly  in  Philadelphia  sixteen  times,  riding 
the  whole  way  on  horseback  or  in  a  sulky,  and 
was  once  moderator. 

Besides  his  contribution  to  the  intellectual 
life  of  his  people  by  his  preaching,  he  founded 
a  circulating  library,  organized  debating  so- 
cieties, formed  classes  in  grammar  for  which 
he  wrote  his  own  text-book,  afterwards  pub- 
lished, and  established  a  school  of  classical, 
scientific  and  theological  study,  where  many 
of  the  leading  men  of  the  time  in  all  walks  of 
life  were  educated,  including  at  least  twenty 
prominent  ministers,  whose  names  we  know 
and  whose  labors  extended  and  perpetuated 
Dr.  Hall's  influence  throughout  the  Carolinas, 
Georgia,  Tennessee  and  Kentucky.  He  was 
present  at  the  formation  of  the  American  Bible 
Society  and  was  the  first  president  of  the  North 
Carolina  State  Bible  Society. 

An  incendiary  commander,  who  ravaged  a 
fair  land  during  our  Civil  War,  burning  the 
houses  of  the  people  and  turning  women  and 
children    and    invalids    into    the    wintry    weather 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  143 

without  shelter,  said  with  full  knowledge,  "War 
is  hell."  He  was  referring  to  physical  conditions, 
but  it  is  largely  true  in  the  moral  sense  also. 
The  demoralization  which  always  accompanies 
war  manifested  itself  at  the  close  of  our  Revolu- 
tionary struggle  in  an  appalling  increase  of  vice — 
profanity,  drunkenness  and  gambling.  Dr.  Hall's 
spirit  was  stirred  within  him  when  he  saw  the 
country  so  given  to  sin,  and  he  prayed  and 
preached  more  earnestly  than  ever.  God  gracious- 
ly blessed  his  efforts  and  granted  to  his  charge  the 
first  revival  of  religion  in  Concord  Presbytery 
after  the  Revolution.  At  one  communion  about 
eighty  members  were  received  on  profession  of 
faith  and  at  another  about  sixty. 

Such  were  the  strenuous  and  varied  activi- 
ties of  the  father  of  Presbyterianism  in   Iredell. 

OTHER   REVOLUTIONARY   WORTHIES   WEST   OF   THE 
YADKIN. 

Craighead  and  Hall  have  been  somewhat 
fully  sketched  as  representing  the  pre-Revo- 
lutionary  and  Revolutionary  periods  of  our 
Church's  history  in  the  region  between  the 
Yadkin  and  the  Catawba.  The  limits  of  this 
paper  forbid  our  speaking  with  equal  fullness 
of  Hall's  contemporaries  and  successors  in  the 
territory  now  comprised  in  Iredell,  Rowan,  Ca- 
barrus and  Mecklenburg,  and  in  parts  of  Lin- 
coln and  Gaston — of  Samuel  E.  McCorkle,  the 
first  pastor  of  Thyatira  (1777),  who  married  the 
daughter  of  Mrs.  Steele,  of  Salisbury,  the  pa- 
triotic friend  of  General  Greene;  who  founded 
the    classical    school    in    Rowan    from    which    six 


144  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

of  the  seven  members  of  the  first  class  at  the 
University  of  North  CaroHna  came;  who  trained 
forty-five  bo^'s  who  afterwards  entered  the  min- 
i  str}^  besides  many  others  who  served  their  country 
at  the  bar,  on  the  bench  and  in  the  chair  of  state; 
who  was  himself  elected  the  first  professor  in  the 
University  at  Chapel  Hill,  a  position  which  he  de- 
clined; who  devised  and  operated  in  his  congrega- 
tion with  the  aid  of  his  elders  a  method  of  syste- 
matic and  comprehensive  Bible  study,  which  prob- 
ably secured  as  good  results  in  the  way  of  scriptural 
knowledge  as  any  of  the  advanced  methods  of  this 
present  time; — of  Hezekiah  James  Balch,  pas- 
tor of  Rocky  River  and  Poplar  Tent,  the  only 
minister  who  sat  in  the  Mecklenburg  Conven- 
tion of  1775; — of  Ephraim  Brevard,  the  Chris- 
tian physician  and  statesman,  who  framed  the 
resolutions  adopted  by  that  convention; — of 
Thomas  H.  McCaule,  the  patriotic  pastor  of 
Center,  who  accompanied  his  people  to  the 
camp  and  was  by  the  side  of  General  William 
Davidson  when  that  brilliant  young  officer  was 
killed  at  Cowan's  Ford,  leaving  behind  him  an 
illustrious  name  which  will  live  forever  in  con- 
nection with  our  great  college  for  young  men; 
— of  Humphrey  Hunter,  w^ho,  when  Liberty 
Hall  Academy  at  Charlotte  was  broken  up  by 
the  invasion  of  Cornwallis,  joined  the  army 
along  with  other  students,  was  captured  in  the 
defeat  of  Gates  at  Camden,  fought  and  van- 
quished with  pine  knots  a  British  cavalryman 
fully  armed  with  sword  and  pistols,  and  short- 
ly afterwards,  with  a  few  fellow-prisoners,  seized 
and  disarmed  the  guard  and  escaped,  was  wounded 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  145 

at  Eutaw  Springs,  studied  theology  after  the  war, 
and  became  pastor  of  Unity  in  Lincoln  and  of 
Goshen  in  Gaston  (where  my  own  forebears 
worshipped  and  are  buried),  and  later  of  Steel 
Creek  in  Mecklenburg,  where  he  spent  the  last 
twenty-two  years  of  his  life,  acting  also  as  free 
physician  to  his  people,  as  well  as  their  pastor, 
because  of  the  scarcity  of  regular  doctors  at  that 
period — a  good  type  of  the  intrepid,  active,  versa- 
tile and  devoted  patriots  and  preachers  who  won 
the  liberties  of  this  land  and  laid  the  foundations 
of  our  society  in  the  fear  of  God; — of  the  Alex- 
anders, Grahams,  Johnsons,  McDowells,  Osbornes, 
Morrisons,  Ramseys,  Wilsons,  Caldwells,  Harrises, 
Robinsons,  Irwins,  Phifers,  Averys,  Polks,  Pharrs, 
Griers  and  many  others,  the  rank  and  file,  the 
bone  and  sinew  of  the  staunch  population  which 
dwelt  between  the  Yadkin  and  the  Catawba  in 
that  formative  period  and  whose  faith  and  force 
of  character  gave  to  the  Presbyterian  element  the 
pre-eminence  in  all  that  region  which  it  maintains 
to  this  day; — of  all  these  nothing  can  be  said  in 
this  paper  beyond  this  bare  allusion. 

THE  FATHERS  OF  THE  CHURCH  IN  GRANVILLE,  CASWELL, 
ORANGE  AND  GUILFORD. 

Besides  Duplin  and  Cumberland  in  the  east  and 
the  Yadkin-Catawba  country  in  the  west,  there 
was  a  third  portion  of  the  State  in  which  im- 
portant foundation  work  was  done  in  the  pre- 
Revolutionary  period,  the  northern  portion,  the 
region  extending  eastward  and  northward  from  the 
place  where  we  now  stand  to  the  Virginia  line.  Dr. 
D.  I.  Craig  has  pointed  out  that  if  the  graves  of 


146  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

the  three  patriarchs  of  Presbyterlanism  in  North 
CaroHna — Campbell,  Craighead  and  McAden — 
near  Fayetteville,  Charlotte  and  Milton,  respec- 
tively, be  taken  as  starting  points  and  lines  be 
drawn  from  one  to  another,  those  lines  will  form 
an  almost  perfect  triangle,  including  the  central 
portion  of  the  State,  the  core  of  the  Common- 
wealth, and  will  touch  most  of  the  territory  in 
which  the  earlier  Presbyterian  settlements  were 
made,  w^ith  the  greater  part  of  our  strength  clus- 
tering around  the  three  angles.  Two  of  these 
angles,  those  near  Fayetteville  and  Charlotte,  we 
have  considered,  and  now  turn  to  the  third,  the 
one  projecting  into  the  northern  tier  of  counties, 
Granville,  Caswell,  Orange  and  Guilford  (which 
then  extended  to  the  Virginia  line).  Scotch- 
Irish  Presbyterians  began  to  settle  along  the  Eno 
and  Haw  rivers  about  1738,  and  were  visited  at 
intervals  by  missionaries  sent  out  by  the  synods 
of  New  York  and  Philadelphia.  We  have  already 
noted  the  fact  that  McAden  visited  them  in  1755, 
and  that  about  1768,  after  his  nine  years'  ministry 
in  Duplin,  he  became  resident  pastor  in  Caswell, 
preaching  at  Dan  River,  Red  House  and  North 
Hico  (Grier's).  Three  years  before  McAden's 
settlement  there — that  is,  in  1765 — the  Presby- 
tery of  Hanover  convened  at  Lower  Hico  church 
(afterwards  called  Barnett's)  in  what  is  now  Per- 
son county  (the  first  meeting  of  a  Presbytery  ever 
held  in  the  State),  and  had  ordained  Rev.  James 
Creswell  pastor  of  Lower  Hico  and  of  Grassy 
Creek  and  Nutbush  churches  in  Granville  county, 
where  Presbyterian  immigrants  from  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Richmond,  Va.,  had  settled  some  years 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  147 

before.     Grassy  Creek  is  said  to  have  been  organ- 
ized in  1753  and  Nutbush  in  1757. 

HENRY  PATILLO. 

At  the  same  meeting  of  Hanover  Presbytery  at 
Lower  Hico  (1765),  Rev.  Henry  Patillo  was  called 
to  Hawfields,  Eno  and  Little  River  churches, 
which  he  served  for  nine  years.  In  1780  he  suc- 
ceeded Creswell  as  pastor  of  Grassy  Creek  and 
Nutbush.  Patillo,  a  native  of  Scotland,  had  been 
trained  in  theology  by  the  celebrated  Samuel 
Davies,  then  living  near  Richmond,  Va.,  and  had 
preached  for  six  years  in  that  State.  His  minis- 
try in  Orange  and  Granville  continued  for  thirty- 
five  years. 

Although  he  made  an  imprudently  early  mar- 
riage in  1755  and  lived  in  a  "house  sixteen  by 
twelve  and  an  outside  chimney,  with  an  eight-foot 
shed — a  little  chimney  to  it,"  as  he  tells  us  in  his 
journal,  a  house  in  which  there  were  eleven  people, 
six  of  whom  were  his  scholars,  on  the  day  that  his 
little  chimney  was  shattered  by  lightning;  and  al- 
though he  was  not  college  bred,  he  made  himself 
one  of  the  best  educated  men  of  his  time.  This  is 
attested  by  the  fact  that  in  1788,  thirty-two  years 
after  his  marriage  and  twenty-nine  years  after  his 
ordination,  he  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
Master  of  Arts  from  Hampden-Sidney  College. 
In  the  same  year  he  issued  from  the  press  at  Wil- 
mington a  volume  of  sermons.  He  seems  to  have 
used  his  pen  freely,  and  a  number  of  manuscripts 
on  various  religious  subjects  have  been  preserved, 
but  the  most  interesting  of  all  his  writings  is  his 
Geographical    Catechism,    printed    in    Halifax    in 


148  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

1796,  "the  first  text-book  written  in  North  Caro- 
Hna."  The  original  manuscript  of  this  work  is 
now  in  the  Hbrary  of  Union  Theological  Seminary 
at  Richmond.  A  reprint  of  it  was  published  by 
the  University  of  North  Carolina  in  1909.  Into 
sixty-two  pages  he  has  packed  an  astonishing 
amount  of  information  about  astronomy,  the  air, 
and  the  different  countries  of  the  world,  all  writ- 
ten with  admirable  vivacity  and  all  perv^aded  by  a 
profound  religious  spirit,  his  chief  purpose  being 
to  give  his  readers  more  just  conceptions  of  the 
wonderful  w^orks  of  God,  as  he  states  in  the  preface. 

During  virtually  the  whole  of  his  adult  life  he 
was  a  teacher.  At  Hawfields,  Williamsboro  and 
Granville  Hall  he  conducted  schools  which  were 
nurseries  not  only  of  learning,  but  of  piety  and 
patriotism  as  well. 

Like  Craighead  who  laid  the  egg  of  independ- 
ence; like  Balch  who  helped  to  hatch  it  in  the 
Mecklenburg  convention;  like  Hall  and  Hunter 
who  bore  arms  in  the  field;  like  McCaule,  pastor 
of  Center,  who  once  ran  for  Governor  and  fell  but 
little  short  of  election;  and,  indeed,  like  all  the 
Presbyterian  ministers  of  those  stirring  times,  Pa- 
tillo  took  an  active  interest  in  public  affairs.  He 
was  one  of  the  prominent  men  chosen  by  Governor 
Tryon  to  pacify  the  Regulators.  He  was  sent  as 
a  delegate  to  the  first  Provincial  Congress  of 
North  Carolina  at  Hillsboro  in  1775;  was  chosen 
as  one  of  the  chaplains  of  that  bod^',  and  was 
called  to  preside  in  the  Committee  of  the  Whole. 
He  was  also  a  member  of  the  Committee  of  Safety 
for  the  Halifax  district. 

Not  the  least  of  Patillo's  claims  to  honorable 


^'  .  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  149 

mention  on  the  present  occasion  particularh'  is  the 
fact  that  he  organized  Alamance  church.  That 
was  in  the  year  1762,  one  hundred  and  fifty-one 
years  ago. 

DAVID  CALDWTLL. 

In  the  year  1764  Rev.  David  Caldwell,  a  ^oung 
licentiate  of  New  Brunswick  Presbytery,  was  sent 
to  North  Carolina  as  a  missionar^^  and  visited 
Alamance  church  and  also  the  sister  church,  Buf- 
falo, which  had  been  organized  in  1756.  He  did 
not  come  as  a  stranger.  Many  of  these  people  had 
known  him  in  Pennsylvania  before  their  emigra- 
tion to  North  Carolina  while  he  was  preparing  for 
college,  and  when  they  left  Pennsylvania  they  had 
themselves  suggested  that  when  he  was  licensed 
he  should  come  to  Carolina  and  be  their  minister. 
And  so  it  came  about,  though  it  was  not  till  1768 
that  he  was  formally  installed  as  pastor.  Rev.  Hugh 
jMcAden  conducting  the  installation  service.  His 
biographer.  Rev.  Eli  W.  Caruthers,  who  was  also 
his  successor  as  pastor  of  this  charge,  says  he 
exerted  a  more  extensive  and  lasting  influence 
than  any  other  man  belonging  to  that  eventful 
period,  and  that  ''his  history  is  more  identified 
with  that  of  the  country — at  least  so  far  as  litera- 
ture and  enlightened  piet}'  and  good  morals  are 
concerned — than  the  history  of  an^'  one  man  who 
has  lived  in  it."  For  that  reason,  as  well  as  for 
the  reason  that  he  was  for  sixty  years  the  minister 
of  this  church  and  was  pastor  of  it  when  the  Synod 
of  North  Carolina  was  organized  in  1813,  it  be- 
hooves us  to  include  in  this  paper  at  least  a  brief 
sketch  of  his  life  and  work. 


150  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

He  was  born  in  Lancaster  county,  Pa.,  in 
1725,  the  son  of  a  farmer  in  good  circumstances. 
He  was  reared  in  a  Christian  home  and  received 
the  rudiments  of  an  EngHsh  education.  He  then 
served  as  an  apprentice  to  a  house  carpenter  till 
he  was  twenty-one  years  of  age;  after  which  he 
worked  at  his  trade  for  four  years  on  his  own 
account.  He  was  twenty-five  years  old  before  he 
ever  saw  a  Latin  grammar,  but  his  heart  was  set 
on  the  ministry,  and  he  labored  with  unwearied 
perseverance  for  an  education.  Let  the  young  men 
of  this  hurried  age  note  the  fact  that  he  was 
thirty-six  years  old  when  he  received  his  degree 
of  Bachelor  of  Arts  at  Princeton  College.  After 
teaching  school  for  a  year  he  returned  to  Prince- 
ton and  served  as  tutor  in  the  college,  pursuing 
at  the  same  time  his  studies  in  theology. 

The  salary  promised  him  in  North  Carolina  was 
only  two  hundred  dollars  a  year,  but  by  the  culti- 
vation of  a  small  farm  and  by  the  teaching  of  a 
school  he  managed  to  provide  comfortably  for  his 
family.  As  there  was  no  physician  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, he  procured  the  necessary  books,  and  by 
diligent  study  fitted  himself  for  the  practice  of 
medicine,  which  he  pursued  with  such  success  that 
he  became  scarcely  less  celebrated  as  a  doctor  than 
as  a  minister  and  teacher.  Blessed  with  a  power- 
ful constitution  and  leading  a  temperate  life,  re- 
tiring at  ten  and  rising  at  four,  studying  diligently 
in  the  early  hours  of  the  day,  getting  sufficient 
physical  exercise  by  labor  on  his  farm  and  by  pas- 
toral visitation,  systematizing  the  work  of  his  large 
school  and  his  two  large  congregations,  he  per- 
formed his  multifarious  duties  as  preacher,  pastor, 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  151 

physician  and  teacher  in  a  manner  which  entitles 
him  to  a  unique  position  among  the  makers  of  our 
Commonwealth. 

The  gracious  wisdom  and  tact  which  he  showed 
as  a  very  young  man  in  composing  the  differences 
between  the  Old  Side  and  New  Side  parties  in  his 
two  congregations  were  but  an  earnest  of  his  in- 
valuable services  throughout  his  long  life  as  an 
adviser  and  mediator  in  both  private  and  public 
affairs.  Many  of  his  people  were  involved  in  the 
struggle  of  the  Regulators,  and  he  labored  to  the 
last  both  with  them  and  with  Governor  Tryon  to 
prevent  the  shedding  of  blood,  and  on  the  morn- 
ing of  the  disastrous  battle  on  the  Alamance  was 
riding  along  the  lines,  urging  the  men  to  go  home 
without  violence,  when  the  command  to  fire  was 
given.  But  he  was  heart  and  soul  with  his  people 
in  their  opposition  to  British  tyranny.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Halifax  Convention  called  in  1776 
to  form  a  new  system  of  government.  His  active 
advocacy  of  the  cause  of  the  colonies  among  his 
own  parishioners  made  all  the  men  of  his  congre- 
gations thoroughgoing  Whigs,  and  rendered  him 
so  obnoxious  to  Lord  Cornwallis  that  he  offered  a 
reward  of  two  hundred  pounds  for  Caldwell's  ap- 
prehension, and  when  the  main  body  of  the  British 
army  encamped  for  a  time  on  his  plantation 
they  plundered  his  house,  burned  his  books  and 
valuable  papers,  destroyed  his  property  and  con- 
sumed or  carried  away  all  provisions.  Mrs.  Cald- 
well and  her  young  children  were  compelled  to 
take  refuge  for  two  days  and  nights  in  the  smoke- 
house, with  no  food  except  a  few  dried  peaches 
which  she  chanced  to  have  in  her  pockets.     The 


152  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

doctor  himself  had  lain  in  hiding  for  two  weeks 
or  more  in  the  wooded  lowgrounds  of  North  Buf- 
falo, and  after  a  narrow  escape  from  capture  had 
made  his  way  to  General  Greene's  camp.  The 
battle  of  Guilford  Courthouse,  which  was  fought 
in  one  side  of  the  Buffalo  congregation  and  within 
two  or  three  miles  of  Dr.  Caldwell's  house,  was 
the  beginning  of  the  end.  Cornwallis  .retreated, 
and  in  a  few  months  his  surrender  at  Yorktown 
gave  the  land  peace. 

,An  ardent  patriot,  a  wise  counselor,  a  skillful 
physician,  a  faithful  pastor,  a  strong  preacher. 
Dr.  Caldwell  rendered  services  of  the  most  varied 
and  valuable  character  to  his  generation;  but  in 
no  capacity  did  he  render  a  more  important  ser- 
vice or  achieve  a  more  lasting  renown  than  as  a 
teacher  of  youth.  He  had  peculiar  tact  in  the 
management  of  boys  and  extraordinary  skill  in 
the  development  of  their  powers,  so  that  his  log 
cabin  school,  opened  in  1767,  speedily  became 
known  as  the  most  efficient  institution  in  the 
State.  Not  only  so,  it  attracted  students  from  all 
the  States  south  of  the  Potomac.  He  usually  had 
fifty  or  sixty  scholars,  a  large  number  for  the  time 
and  circumstances  of  the  country.  He  was  "in- 
strumental in  bringing  more  men  into  the  learned 
professions  than  any  other  man  of  his  day,  at 
least  in  the  Southern  States.  Man}^  of  these  be- 
came eminent  as  statesmen,  lawyers,  judges,  phy- 
sicians and  ministers  of  the  gospel."  Five  of 
them  became  governors  of  States,  including  the 
late  Governor  Morehead,  of  North  Carolina. 
About  fifty  of  them  became  ministers,  having 
received  from  him  their  whole  theological  as  well 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  153 

as  literary  training.  Among  these  were  Rev. 
Samuel  E.  McCorkle,  of  Rowan,  already  referred 
to,  and  Rev.  John  Matthews,  who  succeeded 
Patillo  as  pastor  of  Nutbush  and  Grassy  Creek,  and 
later  founded  the  theological  seminary  at  New 
Albany,  Indiana,  which  was  afterwards  moved  to 
Chicago  and  is  now  known  as  McCormick  Semi- 
nary. 

That  so  many  young  men  entered  the  ministry 
from  this  school  was  due  in  large  part  to  Dr. 
Caldwell's  wife.  In  1766,  he  had  married  Rachel 
Craighead,  the  third  daughter  of  Rev.  Alexander 
Craighead,  of  Sugar  Creek,  whom  he  had  known 
as  a  child  in  Pennsylvania  some  fifteen  years  be- 
fore. She  bore  him  twelve  children,  and  vastly 
increased  the  usefulness  of  his  life  in  other  ways. 
The  current  saying  through  the  country  was,  "Dr. 
Caldwell  makes  the  scholars  and  Mrs.  Caldwell 
makes  the  ministers." 

Dr.  Caldwell  died  in  1824,  in  his  one  hun- 
dredth year,  leaving  to  these  congregations  and 
the  Synod  and  the  State  the  memory  of  a  conse- 
crated life,  of  varied  talents  wisely  used,  and  of 
a  busy  and  beneficent  career  in  the  service  of  God 
and  his  fellow-men. 

Mr.  Moderator:  I  have  deliberately  taken  the 
risk  of  wearying  the  Synod  with  this  great  mass 
of  local  and  personal  details,  because  I  believed 
that  it  was  only  in  this  way  we  could  get  any 
vivid  impression  of  the  amount  of  labor  performed 
by  the  fathers  of  our  Church  in  this  State — such 
as  Campbell  and  McAden,  Craighead  and  Hall, 
Patillo  and  Caldwell — and  any  just  idea  of  the 
value  of  their  services  in  propagating  a  pure  and 


154  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

strong  religion,  in  bearing  almost  the  whole  burden 
of  education  in  the  formative  period  of  our  history, 
in  determining  so  largely  the  staunch  character 
of  the  people  of  this  Commonwealth  and  in  pro- 
moting the  cause  of  civil  and  religious  liberty. 
"Without  any  disposition  to  disparage  the  labors 
or  the  influence  of  others,  it  is  believed  that 
North  Carolina  is  more  indebted  to  their  en- 
lightened and  Christian  efforts  for  the  character 
which  she  has  ever  since  sustained  for  intelligence, 
probity  and  good  order  than  to  any  other  cause." 

THE  SUCCESSION  OF  CHURCH  COURTS. 

As  to  the  church  courts,  under  whose  auspices 
the  early  work  of  our  Church  in  North  Carolina 
was  done,  we  have  already  seen  that  the  early 
missionaries  were  sent  into  this  region  by  the 
Synods  and  Presbyteries  centering  about  Phila- 
delphia and  New  York.  In  1755,  the  year  of  Mc- 
Aden's  tour,  the  Presbytery  of  Hanover  was 
formed,  embracing  the  whole  South,  North  Caro- 
lina included.  Four  meetings  of  Hanover  Pres- 
bytery were  held  in  this  State — one  at  Lower  Hico 
(Barnett's)  in  1765,  one  at  North  Hico  (Crier's) 
in  1766,  and  two  at  Buffalo  in  1768  and  1770, 
respectively.  In  September,  1770,  Orange  Pres- 
bytery was  formed  at  Hawfield's  church,  in  Or- 
ange county,  with  seven  ministers — McAden,  Pa- 
tillo,  Creswell,  Caldwell,  Joseph  Alexander,  Heze- 
kiah  Balch  and  Hezekiah  J.  Balch — and  about 
forty  or  fifty  churches,  with  a  membership  of 
perhaps  two  thousand.  In  1784,  the  Presbytery 
of  South  Carolina  was  set  off  from  Hanover  with 
six   ministers.     In    1788,    the   year   in   which   the 


*'  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  155 

General  Assembly  was  organized,  the  Synod  of  the 
Carolinas  was  erected  and  held  its  first  meeting  in 
Center  church,  in  Iredell,  David  Caldwell  preach- 
ing the  opening  sermon  and  presiding  as  modera- 
tor.    In  1795,  the  Presbytery  of  Concord,  embrac- 
ing the  territory  west  of  the  Yadkin,  was  set  off 
with  twelve  ministers — Samuel  McCorkle,  James 
Hall,  James  McRee,  David  Barr,  Samuel  C.  Cald- 
well, James  Wallis,  J.  D.  Kilpatrick,  L.  F.  Wil- 
son,   John    Carrigan,    Humphrey    Hunter,    J.    M. 
Wilson    and   Alexander   Caldwell.     In    1812,    the 
Presbytery  of  Fayetteville  was  set  off  from  Orange 
with  eight  ministers — Samuel   Stanford,   William 
L.  Turner,  Malcolm  McNair,  Murdock  McMillan, 
John  Mclntyre,  William  Meroney,  Allen  McDou- 
gald    and    William    Peacock — and    held    its    first 
meeting  at  Center  church,  in  Robeson  county,  Oc- 
tober 21,  1813.     The  Synod  of  the  Carolinas  ex- 
isted for  twenty-four  years,  and  was  then  divided 
in  1812  into  two  synods,  the  Synod  of  North  Caro- 
lina and  the  Synod  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia. 
The  Synod  of  North  Carolina  held  its  first  meet- 
ing in  Alamance  church  on  October  7,  1813,  and 
it    is    the    centennial    anniversary    of    this    event 
which   we  celebrate   to-day.     There  were   twelve 
ministers  present  at  that  meeting  a  hundred  years 
ago — David     Caldwell,     Robert     H.     Chapman, 
James   W.   Thompson,   William    Paisley,    Samuel 
Paisley,  Robert  Tate,   Murdock  McMillan,  John 
Mclntyre,  James  Hall,  Samuel  C.  Caldwell,  John 
M.  Wilson  and  John  Robinson — and  three  ruling 
elders,  Hugh  Forbes,  John  McDonald  and  William 
Carrigan.     The    opening    sermon    was    preached 
by  Rev.  James  Hall,  D.  D.,  from  the  text,  "Go 


156  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  gospel  to 
every  creature,"  and  Rev.  R.  H.  Chapman,  D.  D., 
was  elected  moderator  and  also  stated  clerk, 

GROWTH  OF  THE  SYNOD  FROM  1813  TO  1863. 

The  Synod  thus  organized  was  composed  of  the 
three  Presbyteries  of  Orange,  Concord  and  Fay- 
etteville,  and  comprised  thirty-one  ministers, 
eighty-five  churches,  and  about  four  thousand 
communicants.  By  1832,  there  were  sixty-four 
ministers,  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  churches 
and  about  eight  thousand  communicants;  that 
is,  the  number  of  both  ministers  and  members 
had  doubled  in  twenty  years,  and  the  number 
of  churches  had  increased  by  forty-two.  In 
1860,  when  the  Synod  met  at  Statesville,  there 
were  three  presbyteries,  ninety-two  ministers,  one 
hundred  and  eighty-four  churches,  and  about 
fifteen  thousand  six  hundred  communicants;  that 
is,  in  about  thirty  years  there  had  been  a  gain  of 
twenty-eight  ministers  (less  than  one  a  year), 
fifty-seven  churches  (only  about  two  a  year),  but 
the  number  of  communicants  had  again  nearly 
doubled.  Then  the  country  was  plunged  into  war, 
and  the  growth  of  the  Church  was  rudely  checked. 
In  the  half  century  stretching  from  1813  to  1863 
the  number  of  churches  had  more  than  doubled, 
the  number  of  ministers  had  trebled,  and  the  num- 
ber of  communicants  had  grown  from  four  thou- 
sand to  nearly  sixteen  thousand,  a  four-fold  in- 
crease; but  during  the  four  years  of  conflict  in 
the  60's  the  Synod  gained  only  eight  ministers 
and  five  churches,  and  lost  more  than  two  thou- 
sand   communicants,     mostly    young    men,     the 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  157 

Strength  and  hope  of  the  Church,  who  were  killed 
in  battle  or  died  in  prison. 

SPECIAL  FEATURES  OF  THE  CHURCH'S  WORK. 

This  sketch  of  the  history  of  our  Church  in 
North  Carolina  during  the  one  hundred  and 
twenty  years  from  the  time  that  William  Robinson 
preached  the  first  Presbyterian  sermon  in  the  State 
(1742)  to  the  time  of  our  Civil  War  would  not 
be  complete  even  as  a  bird's-eye  view  without  a 
more  definite  mention  of  certain  special  features. 

POLITICAL. 

1.  The  services  rendered  by  our  ministers  and 
people  in  the  struggle  for  national  independence. 

The  revolt  of  the  American  colonies  was  spoken 
of  in  England  as  a  Presbyterian  rebellion.  When 
Horace  Walpole  said,  "Cousin  America  has  run 
away  with  a  Presbyterian  parson,"  he  w^as  doubt- 
less referring  particularly  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  John 
Witherspoon,  president  of  Princeton,  whose  speech 
in  the  Colonial  Congress  swept  the  waverers  to  a 
decision  in  favor  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence and  who  was  the  only  minister  of  any  de- 
nomination who  signed  that  immortal  document. 
But  it  was  a  remark  that  might  well  have  been 
made  with  the  Presbyterian  ministers  of  North 
Carolina  in  view.  These  thoughtful  and  conse- 
crated men  well  knew  that  with  the  common 
course  of  politics  ministers  should  have  nothing 
to  do  in  the  pulpit;  but  they  knew  also  that  there 
were  crises  which  justified  their  intervention  as 
ministers,  when  everything  was  at  stake,  including 
even  their  right  to  worship  God  according  to  their 


158  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

own  understanding  of  His  requirements,  and  that 
"measures  of  government  that  proceed  from  a 
want  of  moral  principle,  that  are  fraught  with  in- 
justice and  corruption,"  and  that  involve  the  de- 
struction of  civil  liberty  and  freedom  of  con- 
science, "are  as  legitimate  objects  of  denunication 
and  warning  from  the  pulpit  as  anything  else." 
And  they  acted  on  the  belief.  They  instructed  the 
people  in  their  rights.  They  called  them  to  arms 
in  defense  of  their  liberties.  They  sat  in  the 
councils  of  State.  They  endured  the  privations 
of  the  camp  and  the  fatigues  of  the  march,  and 
they  fought  beside  their  parishioners  on  the  fields 
of  bloody  strife.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  American  Revolution  could  not  have  succeeded 
but  for  the  Presbyterian  ministers.  While  some 
denominations  in  Carolina  were  opposed  to  war 
under  any  circumstances,  and  therefore  preferred 
submission  to  armed  resistance;  and  while  the 
clergy  of  some  other  denominations  supported  the 
Crown  and  bitterly  opposed  the  movements  for 
independence,  the  Presbyterian  ministers  through- 
out the  wiiole  country  gave  to  the  cause  of  the 
colonies  all  that  they  could  give  of  the  sanction  of 
religion,  and  wherever  a  minister  of  that  denomi- 
nation was  settled  the  people  around  him  were 
Whigs  almost  to  a  man.  This  is  now  gratefully 
recognized  by  our  brethren  of  all  denominations, 
and  whatever  the  indifference  or  shortcomings  or 
hostility  of  their  own  ministers  to  the  people's 
cause  in  the  Revolutionary  struggle,  they  all  now 
alike  honor  the  Presbyterian  ministers  who  de- 
nounced the  oppressions  of  the  mother  country 
and  fired  the  hearts  of  the  people  to  resistance 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  159 

and  fought  and  suffered  to  secure  the  freedom  in 
which  all  alike  rejoice  to-day. 

APOLOGETIC. 

2.  The  services  of  our  ministers  in  stemming  the 
tide  of  French  infidelity  which  swept  over  our 
country  after  the  Revolutionary  War. 

As  a  result  of  the  timely  aid  given  us  by  France 
in  our  struggle  with  Great  Britain,  the  citizens  of 
the  new  republic  were  kindly  disposed  towards 
the  French  people,  and  were,  therefore,  the  more 
ready  to  give  a  sympathetic  hearing  even  to  their 
skeptical  philosophy.  The  country  was  flooded 
with  their  infidel  publications.  Many  of  our  peo- 
ple, and  at  least  one  of  our  ministers,  afterw^ards 
a  professor  in  the  State  University,  were  swept 
from  their  ancestral  faith.  But  the  great  body 
of  our  ministers  were  not  only  unaffected  by  it 
themselves,  but  withstood  it  boldly  and  success- 
fully, and  in  the  end  rolled  back  the  tide  and 
rescued  their  people.  Being  well-trained  and  well- 
equipped,  they  brought  all  the  resources  of  their 
learning  and  all  the  force  of  their  logic  to  the  con- 
test, and  eventually  routed  the  disciples  of  Vol- 
taire and  Paine,  and  so  saved  their  country  alike 
from  the  horrible  demoralization  of  infidel  France 
and  the  paralyzing  unbelief  of  Unitarian  New 
England.  Witness  the  work  of  James  Wallis  at 
Providence  in  counteracting  the  influence  of  the 
talented  and  wealthy  debating  society  of  infidels 
in  his  neighborhood,  with  its  baleful  circulating 
library;  and  the  work  of  Samuel  C.  Caldwell  at 
Sugar  Creek,  and  of  Joseph  Caldwell  at  Chapel 
Hill,    the   first   president   of   the   university;   and 


160  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

many  others.  The  educated  ministry  of  the  Pres- 
byterian Church  had  come  to  the  kingdom  for 
such  a  time  as  that. 

REVIVAL. 

3.  The  growth  of  the  Church  in  periods  of  re- 
vival. 

The  revival  in  Rev.  Dr.  James  Hall's  congrega- 
tions in  Iredell  just  after  the  Revolutionary  War 
has  already  been  referred  to.  A  much  more  ex- 
tensive revival,  which  began  about  1791  under  the 
preaching  of  Rev.  James  McGready,  continued 
for  some  years  in  what  is  now  the  upper  part  of 
Orange  Presbytery,  affecting  the  congregations  of 
Hawfields,  Cross  Roads,  Alamance,  Buffalo,  Stony 
Creek,  Bethlehem,  Haw  River,  Eno,  the  churches 
on  Hico  and  the  waters  of  the  Dan,  and  also  those 
in  Granville.  In  connection  with  this  revival  the 
first  camp  meeting  in  North  Carolina  was  held  at 
Hawfields  in  1801,  the  people  coming  from  a  dis- 
tance in  their  wagons  and  remaining  for  five  days. 
Such  meetings  soon  became  common  all  over  the 
South  and  West.  From  the  churches  of  Orange 
Presbytery  the  interest  spread  to  those  of  Con- 
cord and  Fayetteville  Presbyteries.  In  a  long  and 
interesting  letter  written  by  Dr.  James  Hall  in 
1802,  he  describes  a  meeting  in  Randolph  county 
in  January  of  that  year  which  he  and  three  other 
ministers  of  Concord  Presbytery  attended  with 
about  one  hundred  of  their  people,  traveling  fifty 
to  eighty  miles  on  horseback  and  in  wagons  for 
that  purpose;  another  in  the  same  month  in  Ire- 
dell, conducted  by  eight  Presbyterian,  one  Bap- 
tist and  two  Methodist  ministers,  and  attended  by 


/  HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  161 

four  thousand  people,  notwithstanding  the  in- 
clement wintry  weather;  another  near  Morgan  ton; 
another  of  five  days  in  Iredell  in  March,  conducted 
by  twenty-six  ministers  (seventeen  Presbyterians, 
three  Methodists,  two  Baptists,  two  German  Lu- 
therans, one  Dutch  Calvinist  and  one  Episcopa- 
lian), when  there  were  eight  thousand  to  ten  thou- 
sand people  present  on  Sunday,  divided  into  four 
worshipping  assemblies;  another  two  weeks  later 
in  Mecklenburg  almost  as  largely  attended;  an- 
other in  May  near  the  Guilford  and  Rowan  boun- 
dary. The  writer  says:  "We  are  extremely  happy 
in  the  coalescence  of  our  Methodist  and  Baptist 
brethren  with  us  in  this  great  and  good  work. 
Party  doctrines  are  laid  aside  and  nothing  heard 
from  the  pulpit  but  the  practical  and  experimental 
doctrines  of  the  gospel." 

In  these  meetings  hundreds  of  people  were 
deeply  affected  and  great  numbers  were  added  to 
the  churches.  But,  as  in  Kentucky  and  elsewhere, 
the  judicious  ministers  were  not  a  little  perplexed 
by  the  "bodily  exercises"  with  which  the  religious 
excitement  was  connected  when,  as  if  by  an  electric 
shock,  men,  women  and  children,  white  and  black, 
learned  and  ignorant,  indifferent  and  skeptical, 
robust  and  delicate,  would  be  struck  down,  crying 
for  mercy  or  lie  motionless  and  speechless  some- 
times for  five  hours;  for  it  was  observed  that  "per- 
sons who  had  no  sense  of  religion  were  seized  by 
them  both  at  places  of  public  worship  and  while 
about  their  ordinary  business,  and  some  times  were 
left  as  unconcerned  as  ever."  The  ministers 
studied  these  phenomena  closely,  generally  dis- 
countenanced them,   and  had  the  satisfaction  of 


162  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

seeing  them  gradually  disappear  while  the  real 
religious  interest  continued. 

As  a  result  of  these  meetings  the  existing 
churches  were  greatly  enlarged,  new  congrega- 
tions were  formed,  and  many  ministers  of  the 
gospel  were  raised  up.  "Throughout  Carolina 
wherever  the  revival  prevailed  the  communit}^  re- 
ceived unspeakable  blessings." 

In  1832  there  were  again  notable  revivals  in 
various  parts  of  the  Synod,  especially  in  Concord 
and  Orange  Presbyteries.  "It  is  said  that  one 
hundred  and  sixty-three  persons  were  added  to 
Rocky  River  church,  one  hundred  and  twenty-six 
to  Poplar  Tent  and  Ramah,  and  one  hundred  and 
thirty  to  Charlotte  and  Sugar  Creek  churches.  It 
was  estimated  that  there  were  two  thousand  con- 
versions within  the  bounds  of  the  Synod,  and  that 
six  hundred  of  them  were  in  the  counties  of  Meck- 
lenburg and  Cabarrus."* 

MISSIONARY. 

4.  The  curious  contrast  between  the  activity  of 
the  Church  in  home  missions  before  the  Revolu- 
tion and  the  comparative  neglect  of  this  work 
after  the  Revolution. 

The  gospel  was  faithfully  preached  to  the 
churches  already  organized,  but  for  a  good  many 
years  there  seem  to  have  been  no  settled  plans  and 
no  systematic  and  persistent  efforts  to  carry  the 
work  into  the  regions  beyond.  The  Synod- was  not 
marching,  but  marking  time.  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte said,  "the  army  that  remains  in  its  trenches 

*Craig :  Development  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  North  CaroUna, 
24. 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  163 

is  beaten,"  and  our  Church  had  to  pay  the  in- 
evitable penalty  for  its  inactivity  during  the  early 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  lost  many 
golden  opportunities,  and  our  more  active  breth- 
ren of  other  denominations,  to  their  lasting  honor, 
came  in  and  possessed  much  of  the  territory  which 
should  have  been  evangelized  by  the  Church  which 
was  first  on  the  field,  which  for  long  had  the 
largest  numbers,  and  which  has  always  had  the 
largest  resources  and  the  best  trained  ministers. 
There  were,  of  course,  occasional  creditable  ex- 
ceptions in  both  foreign  and  home  missions,  the 
most  notable  of  which  was  the  work  of  a  young 
man  fresh  from  Union  Seminary,  Daniel  Lindley 
by  name,  who  became  pastor  of  Rocky  River  in 
1832,  and  in  less  than  three  years  received  into 
the  Church  two  hundred  and  fifty-two  members. 
It  is  said*  that  "he  felt  called  to  carry  the  gospel 
to  the  forgotten  people  of  the  mountains  of  North 
Carolina,"  but  that  Concord  Presbytery  denied 
him  that  privilege.  If  that  be  true,  it  was  one  of  the 
most  disastrous  and  far-reaching  mistakes  a  Pres- 
bytery ever  made.  But  the  missionary  spirit  which 
Lindley  had  imbibed  from  John  Holt  Rice  was 
strong  within  him  and  would  not  be  thwarted. 
He  sailed  for  South  Africa,  taking  with  him  Dr. 
Alexander  E.  Wilson,  of  Rocky  River,  and  for 
forty  years  labored  in  the  dark  continent  to  the 
everlasting  good  both  of  the  native  Zulus  and 
the  Dutch  Boers.  When  he  returned  to  America 
in  1874,  I  was  a  freshman  in  college  and  heard 
him  make  a  moving  address  in  the  old  chapel 
(now  Shearer  Biblical  Hall)  at  Davidson. 

*Morrison  Caldwell:  Historical  Sketch  of  Rocky  River  Church. 


164  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

There  were  doubtless  other  instances  of  genuine 
missionary  zeal  and  activity  in  both  the  home  and 
foreign  work,  but  the  fire  did  not  spread,  and  the 
splendid  advance  of  the  Synod  as  a  whole  on  both 
these  lines  has  been  the  achievement  of  a  later 
day. 

EDUCATIONAL. 

5.  The  noble  record  of  our  Church  in  Christian 
education. 

This  subject  has  been  very  properly  given  a 
separate  place  on  the  programme  of  this  celebra- 
tion and  will  be  fully  treated  by  the  able  speakers 
to  whom  it  has  been  assigned,  so  that  nothing 
more  than  a  passing  glance  at  it  is  called  for  here. 
The  view  taken  by  our  Presbyterian  forefathers 
of  the  relations  between  the  Church  and  education 
was  this: 

"She  dreads  no  skeptic's  puny  hands 
While  near  her  school  the  church  spire  stands, 
Nor  fears  the  blinded  bigot's  rule 
While  near  her  church  spire  stands  the  school." 

Hence  that  remarkable  succession  of  classical 
schools  to  which  for  so  long  a  time  the  State  was 
indebted  for  nearly  the  whole  of  its  education  be- 
yond the  mere  rudim.ents  of  English — Queen's 
Museum  (afterwards  Liberty  Hall)  at  Charlotte, 
Grove  Academy  in  Duplin,  the  schools  of  Tate 
at  Wilmington,  Bingham  in  Orange,  Patillo  in 
Granville,  Caldwell  in  Guilford,  Hall  at  Bethany, 
McCaule  at  Center,  McCorklc  at  Thyatira,  Wilson 
at  Rocky  River  and  Wallis  at  Providence — the 
forerunners  of  all  our  present  institutions  of  high- 
er learning.     When  the  State  University  was  pro- 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  105 

jected,  the  people  naturally  looked  to  the  Pres- 
byterians to  do  the  work.  They  did  it.  The  in- 
stitution has  been  in  existence  for  one  hundred 
and  twenty-four  years.  During  the  whole  of  this 
period,  with  the  exception  of  only  twenty  years, 
its  presidents  have  been  Presbyterians,  and  a  large 
proportion  of  its  professors  as  well.  The  first 
president  and  the  real  father  of  the  institution. 
Rev.  Joseph  Caldwell,  not  only  founded  the  Uni- 
versity firmly,  but  stemmed  the  tide  of  infidelity 
there  after  the  defection  of  Kerr  and  Holmes,  and 
put  the  abiding  stamp  of  religion  upon  its  char- 

acter. 

The  only  educational  institution  that  has  ever 
been  under  the  direct  care  and  control  of  the 
Synod  as  such  is  the  Theological  Seminary,  for- 
merly at  Hampden-Sidney  and  now  at  Richmond. 
In  1827,  this  Synod  and  the  the  Synod  of  Virginia 
associatied  themselves  in  the  joint  ow^nership  and 
control  of  the  institution,  and  in  commemoration 
of  the  alliance  it  was  given  the  name  of  Union 
Seminary.  For  eighty-six  years  the  relation  has 
been  one  of  unbroken  harmony  and  of  abounding 
advantage  both  to  the  Seminary  and  the  Synod. 
The  Synod  has  supported  the  Seminary  with  un- 
wavering loyalty  and  generosity,  and  the  Seminary 
has  supplied  the  Synod  with  the  great  majority 
of  its  ministers.  Of  the  235  ministers  now  on 
your  roll,  135  were  trained  at  Union  Seminary; 
that  is  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  whole  number. 

Ten  years  after  the  action  in  regard  to  the  Sem- 
inary, that  is,  in  1837,  the  Presbyterians  of  North 
Carolina  took  another  great  creative  step  in  edu- 
cational work  by  founding  Davidson  College.     As 


166  APPRECIATIONS  AND 

a  result  of  these  two  movements,  they  have  long 
had  and  have  today  the  largest  and  most  fruitful 
of  all  our  Theological  Seminaries  and  the  largest 
and  most  fruitful  of  all  our  Christian  colleges. 

One  other  educational  factor  of  great  im- 
portance which  came  into  existence  in  the  period 
assigned  to  this  sketch  is  The  North  Carolina  Pres- 
nyterian,  now  known  as  The  Presbyterian  Stand- 
ard, which  was  established  in  1857,  and  which 
for  fifty-six  years  has  informed  and  instructed  and 
edified  our  people. 

These,  then,  fathers  and  brethren,  are  some  of 
the  salient  features  of  the  history  of  our  Church 
in  this  State  during  the  one  hundred  and  twenty 
years  from  the  beginning  by  Robinson,  the  first 
missionary,  down  to  the  year  1863.  It  is  a  his- 
tory that  we  do  well  to  cherish,  for  it  will  move  us 
to  profound  gratitude  to  God  for  the  gift  of  this 
land  to  our  fathers  and  for  the  gift  of  our  fathers 
to  this  land;  it  will  remind  us  that  we  are  the 
sons  of  noble  sires,  men  who  played  the  leading 
part  in  forming  the  character  and  institutions  of 
this  Commonwealth;  it  will  thrill  us  with  the 
thought  that  the  heritage  of  truth  and  freedom 
and  opportunities  for  service  which  they  be- 
queathe to  us  is  not  only  a  legacy,  but  a  summons, 
and  that  we  can  best  honor  their  memory  by  emu- 
lating their  services;  and  it  will  inspire  us  with 
the  ambition  to  transmit  this  heritage  to  our  pos- 
terity not  only  undiminished,  but  enlarged.  As 
we  enter  upon  the  second  century  of  our  existence 
as  a  separate  Synod,  let  us  hear  across  the  century 
the  earnest  voice  of  Hall,  uttering  in  the  old  frame 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESSES  167 

building  on  this  spot  in  1813  the  words  of  the 
great  commission,  "Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and 
preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature";  and  let  us 
resolve  with  all  our  hearts  to  obey  that  commis- 
sion, to  replenish  the  ranks  of  our  ministry  with 
the  choicest  of  our  youth,  to  seek  earnestly  the 
power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  promised  by  our  Lord, 
and  to  be  faithful  witnesses  unto  Him  both  in 
Jerusalem  and  in  all  Judea,  and  in  Samaria  and 
unto  the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth. 


INDEX 

Alexander,  Addison — Compared  with  Wm.  Henry  Green 25 

Baxter,  Geo.  A.,  President  of  Washington  College- 
Succeeds  Dr.  Rice  as  Professor  in  Union  Seminary 97 

Tributes  of  Drs.   Moses  D.  Hoge,  Stuart  Robinson,  John 

Leyburn  and  John  H.  Bocock 113 

Bryan,  Joseph — Model  citizen 78 

Business  success '8 

Religious  nature 79 

Impulsiveness 8f 

INIoral  refinement ^^ 

Caldwell,  David — For  sixty-six  years  pastor  at  Almance 149 

Education 150 

Small  salary  as  pastor 150 

Self-trained  physician 150 

Habits  of  study  and  work 1 50 

Services  and  hardships  in  the  Revolutionary  War 151 

Great  work  as  a  teacher 152 

Mrs.  CaldweU 153 

Cald-wt:ll,    Joseph — First    president    of    University    of    North 

Carolina 165 

Campbell,   James — First  settled  Presbyterian  pastor  in   North 

Carolina 134 

BiUngual  preaching 135 

Centennial — Of  C>tus  H.  McCormick 31 

Of  Synod  of  North  Carolina 129 

Of  Union  Theological  Seminary 81 

Cities — Characteristics  of 77 

Craighead,    Alexander — First    settled    pastor    in     Piedmont 

North  Carolina 138 

Father  of  the  Mecklenburg  Declaration 140 

Dabney,  R.  L. — Combination  of  power,  passion  and  tenderness.  .  123 

Versatihty 124 

Graham,  Rev.  Wm.— Teaches  Theology  in  Liberty  Hall  Academy  S9 

Green,  Wm.  Henry — Systematic  student 23 

Painstaking  teacher 25 

Modesty 26 

Courage 27 

Work  as  critic 28 

Recognition  of  his  character  and  learning  by  other  scholars. .  29 


INDEX 

Hall,  James — First  pastor  of  Fourth  Creek 141 

Account  of  great  revival  in  North  CaroUna 160 

Hanover,     Presbytery    of — Begins    the    establishment    of    a 

theological  seminary  at  Hampden-Sidney 90 

Sees  its  project  adopted  by  Synod  of  Virginia 92 

Resumes  control 94 

Surrenders  management  to  Synods  of  Virginia  and  North 

Carolina 96 

HoGE,  Moses — First  professor  in  the  theological  seminary  es- 
tablished by  the  Synod  of  Virginia  in  1812  at  Hampden- 
Sidney 92 

His  Christian  character 93 

John  Randolph's  opinion 93 

Influence  as  a  theologian 93 

HoGE,  Moses  Drury — Pubhc  estimate  of 5 

Appearance  and  manner 7 

Voice 8 

Rhetorical  style 9 

Substantial  attainments 11 

Spiritual  qualities 12 

McAden,  Hxjgh — Missionary  journey  to  North  Carohna 131 

Pastor  in  Duplin  and  New  Hanover 136 

In  Caswell 136 

McCoRMiCK,  Cyrus  H. — Effect  of  his  invention  on  the  develop- 
ment of  our  continent 33 

Rank  as  epoch-maker 35 

Birth 37 

Training 38 

Inventive  talent 40 

Makes  first  reaper 41 

The  machine  tested 42 

Manufacturing  the  reapers  in  Virginia 43 

The  move  to  the  West 45 

Establishment  at  Chicago 46 

Expiration  of  patent 47 

Difficulties  overcome 48 

Introduction  of  reaper  into  Europe 48 

Successive  triumphs 49 

Marriage 50 

Character  and  influence  of  Mrs.  McCormick 61 

Effects  of  the  invention  in  the  cheapening  of  food 52 


INDEX 

* 

In  the  creation  of  raikoads  and  factories 53 

On  the  outcome  of  the  Civil  War 53 

Patriot  and  peacemaker 54 

Christian  and  philanthropist 56 

Love  for  Virginia 57 

Gifts  to  Washington  and  Lee  University  and  Union  Theo- 
logical Seminary 57 

McCormick  Seminary 58 

Personalit}'^ "^ 

Religious  faith ^'^ 

Death 66 

Ministers — Not  priests,  but  teachers 87 

Inadequate   methods   of   training   prior   to    1812 89 

Patillo,   Henry — Self-made  scholar 147 

His  Geographical  Catechism 147 

His  work  as  a  teacher 148 

His  participation  in  pubUc  affairs 148 

Peck,  Thos.  E. — Perspicuity 125 

Poise 125 

Seminal  quality  of   teaching 125 

Weighty  style  of  preaching 126 

Gravity  and  laughter 126 

Modesty,  humiUty  and  Godliness 126 

Presbyterian  Church  in  North  Carolina — 

Result  of  Scotch  and  Scotch-Irish  immigration 1 29 

EarUest  settlement  in  Duplin  county 129 

Other  early  settlements 130 

Wm.  Robinson  the  fnst  missionary 130 

Hugh  McAden's  missionary  journey 131 

Scotch  settlements  on  the  Cape  Fear 133 

James  Campbell  the  first  settled  pastor 134 

McAden,  Tate  and  Bingham  in  the  Wilmington  region 137 

Scotch-Irish  settlements  between  the  Yadkin  and  the  Catawba  139 

Alexander  Craighead  first  pastor  there 139 

The  seven  churches  of  INIecklenburg 140 

Thyatu-a  and  Fourth  Creek • 140 

James  Hall,  pastor,  missionary,  soldier,  educator 141 

Other  Revolutionary  worthies  west  of  the  Yadkin 143 

Fathers  of  the  Church  in  Granville,  Caswell,  Orange  and 

Guilford ^^'"^ 

Henry  PatUlo 147 


INDEX 

David  Caldwell 149 

Succession  of  church  courts 154 

Growth  of  the  Synod  from  1813  to  1863 156 

Losses  by  the  Civil  War 156 

Services  of  the  Presbyterians  in  the  Revolutionary  War 157 

In  stemming  the  tide  of  French  infidelity 159 

Growth  in  periods  of  revival 160 

Neglect  of  home  missions  after  the  Revolution 162 

Work  in  Christian  education 164 

Rice,  John  Holt — Founder  of  Union  Theological  Seminary   in 

Virginia 90 

Financial  agent  of  infant  seminary 91 

Elected  president  of  Princeton  College 95 

Accepts  professorship  in  Seminary  at  Hampden-Sidney .  ...     95 

Begins  with  three  students 95 

Consuming  toils 97 

Remarkable  results  of  his  seven  years'  work 97 

Birth  and  home  Uf e 103 

Passion  for  books 103 

Conversion 104 

Education 104 

Marriage 104 

Pastorate  of  Cub  Creek  church 104 

Called  to  Richmond 105 

Work  there  as  pastor  of  First  Church 105 

Prevents   appointment   of   an   infidel   to   a  professorship   in 

University  of  Virginia 107 

Moderator  of  General  Assembly 107 

Recreation  with  Waverley  Novels 108 

Organizes  Virginia  Bible  Society 109 

Establi.shes  the  Virginia  Evangelical  and  Literary  Magazine.  .  109 
Influence  of  his  Life  of  James  Brainerd  Taylor  on  Robert  E. 

Spcer 109 

Organizes  Young  Men's  Missionary  Society 110 

Leads  the  way  in  organizing  the  Presbyterian  Board  of  Foreign 

Missions 110 

Epoch-maker  in  religious  work 112 

Robinson,     William — First    Presbyterian    preacher    in    North 

Carolina 1 30 

Rockbridge  County — Remarkable  number  of  distinguished  men     36 


>'  INDEX 

Sampson,  Francis  S.— Personal  characteristics 118 

Piety ^^^ 

Power  as  teacher ^  ^^ 

Commentary  on  Hebrews 119 

Scotch-Irish — Lead  in  achieving  our  national  independence  and 

in  v,-inning  the  interior  of  the  continent 31 

In  North  Carolina 1^9 

Scotch  Settlements — In  North  Carolina 133 

Smith,  Benjamin  M.— Long  professorship 120 

Compiles  General  Catalogue  of  Seminary 121 

Skill  in  debate ^^^ 

Elaborate  extemporaneous  style 121 

Great  service  to  the  Seminary  as  financial  agent 122 

Smith,  Jacob  Henry— Knowledge  of  books 14 

Power  as  preacher 1^ 

Conversion  of  Charles  A.  Briggs 16 

Raconteur ^° 

Social  traits 1^ 

Home  life ^0 

Wide  and  lasting  influence 21 

Spence,  W.  W.— Remarkable  activity  in  old  age 67 

Native  of  Scotland 69 

Edinburgh  in  his  boyhood 'J^ 

Sails  for  America ^" 

Settles  in  Norfolk ™ 

West  Indian  trade '  ^ 

Moves  to  Baltimore '1 

Partnership  with  Andrew  Reid P 

Prosperity 

Benefactions 

Gift  of  Library  Building  to  Union  Theological  Seminary 74 

Personal  friendships '  _ 

Hospitality 'J^ 

Bolton l^ 

Characteristics • ' " 

Union  Theological  Seminary— Centennial  celebration  of 81 

Beginnings  of.  by  Presbytery  of  Hanover 89 

Founded  by  Synod  of  Vu-ginia 92 

Moses  Hoge  first  professor 93 

Reorganized  under  John  Holt  Rice 9o 


INDEX 

Placed  under  joint  control  of  Synods  of  Virginia  and  North 

Carolina 96 

Growth  under  Dr.  Rice 97 

Succession  of  professors  before  the  Civil  War 98 

Record  in  the  Confederate  Army 99 

Characteristics 127 

Wilson,  Samuel  B. — Venerable  appearance  and  courtly  manner.  116 

Simple  and  spiritual  preaching 116 

Scrupulous  truthfulness 117 

Influence  of  his  saintly  life 117 


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